GIFT   OF 


"A  ' 

'SOjg; 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST 


Noting  the   rise  and  forms  of  human   government.     The  movement  for 
expunging  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  with  the  cause  and 
processes  of  that  movement.    The  passing  of  the  American  Common- 
wealth and  the  evolution  of  the  centralized  State  in  its  stead;  with 
observation  of  the  several  forces  responsible  therefor.    Remarking 
the  various  expedients  for  relief  of  the  working  classes,  among 
which,  the  California  eight-hour  labor  initiatives,  and  sundry 
others.    The  basic  errors  of  such  proposals,  and  the  hope- 
lessness of  benefit  to  the  working  people  through  pursuit 
of  their  direction.    Together  with  consideration  of  the 
true  cause  of  prevailing  wrong  conditions  within  the 
nation,  and  the  disaster  in  which  these  must 
culminate  unless  they  be  intelligently 
and  courageously  corrected* 


fe  have  reached  a  condition  In  this  country  where  apathy  and  Indifference  as  to  where 
we  are  going  amounts  to  national  suicide.  The  trend  of  the  times  is  toward  Socialism, 
if  not  actual  anarchy,  when  many  men  of  Influence  and  standing  appear  to  have  lost 
their  heads  and  are  drifting  with  the  tide  in  the  idiotic  belief  that  by  sympathizing 
with  and  encouraging  hazardous  doctrines  and  dangerous  elements  they  can  head  off 
their  ultimate  evil  results.  It  is  becoming  more  evident  each  day  that  a  crisis  is 
approaching  and  that  our  form  of  representative  government  Is  in  danger;  that 
poisonous  weeds  have  sprung  up  in  political  parties  that  promise  the  destruction  of 
Its  basic  principles.— John  Kirby,  Jr.,  Ex-President  National  Association  of  Manu- 
facturers. 


BY 

JOHN  E.  BENNETT 

OF    THE    SAN    FRANCISCO    BAR 


Our  National  Tendency  and  its  Goal 


Being  a  discussion  of  the  Political  and  Industrial  direction  of  the  United  States 
under  the  influence  of  prevailing  economic  forces,  and  statement  of  the 
causes  thereof,  and  the  means  to  avert  the  conclusion  to  which  those  forces 
are  proceeding. 


Together  with  an  Address  before  the  Chinese 
Students  Association   of  America  at   its  Con- 
vention held  in  San  Francisco  in  January,  1914, 
upon 

THE  STUDENT  IN  ORIENTAL  IMMIGRATION 

Considering  the  effect  upon  *China  and  Japan  of  the  Policy  of  the  United  States 
in  shutting  off  migration  of  the  Orient  with  the  West,  the  real  cause  that 
moves  Industrial  migration,  and  the  condition  that  confronts  Oriental  Stu- 
dents seeking  education  in  the  United  States,  by  reason  of  these  influences. 

32  pp. 

JOHN  E.   BENNETT,  of  the  San  Francisco  gar 


"JAPAN'S  MESSAGETO  AMERICA" 

(A  REPLY) 

Considering   the    impelling   cause  which    moves   the   Japanese   nation   to 

desire  the  good  will  of  the  American  people;  the  necessity  to  Japan  of 

free  intercourse  with  the  civilization  of  the  West,  now  shut  off  by 

immigration  exclusion;   the  calamity  which  inevitably  must  befall 

that  nation  through  a  continuance  of  the  isolation  thrust  upon  her 

by  this  policy.    The  doctrine  of  exclusion  shown  to  rest  upon  a 

mistaken    belief    regarding   the   effect   of   labor    immigration 

upon  wages  of  intra-country  workmen;  the  popular  opinion 

being  that  such   immigration   lowers  wages,  whereas,   in 

truth,  it  raises  wages  and  increases  general  prosperity- 

33  pp. 

By  JOHN  E.  BENNETT 

OF  THE 
SAN  FRANCISCO  BAR 


Copies  of  the  above  and  the  within   pamphlet  may   be   had   by  addressing  the 
author  at  1310-11  Humboldt  Bank  Building,  San  Francisco,  Cal. 


The  author  retains  no  copyright  on  the  within  or  on  either  of  the  above  pamphlets, 
and  anyone  is  privileged  to  publish  the  same  for  sale  or  otherwise,  provided  only  an  entire 
pamphlet  is  printed  and  not  a  part  thereof.  Newspapers  and  magazines  may  make 
excerpts. 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST 


Noting   the    rise   and   forms   of    human    government.      The    movement   for 
expunging   the   Constitution   of  the    United   States,  with   the  cause   and 
processes  of  that  movement.     The  passing  of  the  American  Common- 
wealth and  the  evolution  of  the  centralized  State  in  its  stead;  with 
observation  of  the  several  forces  responsible  therefor.     Remarking 
the  various  expedients  for  relief  of  the  working  classes,  among 
which,  the  California  eight-hour  labor  initiatives,  and  sundry 
others.     The  basic  errors  of  such  proposals,  and  the  hope- 
lessness of  benefit  to  the  working  people  through  pursuit 
of  their  direction.     Together  with  consideration  of  the 
true  cause  of  prevailing  wrong  conditions  within  the 
nation,  and  the  disaster  in  which  these   must 
culminate  unless  they  be  intelligently 
and  courageously  corrected* 


We  have  reached  a  condition  in  this  country  where  apathy  and  indifference  as  to  where 
we  are  going  amounts  to  national  suicide.  The  trend  of  the  times  is  toward  Socialism, 
if  not  actual  anarchy,  when  many  men  of  influence  and  standing  appear  to  have  lost 
their  heads  and  are  drifting  with  the  tide  in  the  idiotic  belief  that  by  sympathizing 
with  and  encouraging  hazardous  doctrines  and  dangerous  elements  they  can  head  off 
their  ultimate  evil  results.  It  is  becoming  more  evident  each  day  that  a  crisis  is 
approaching  and  that  our  form  of  representative  government  is  in  danger;  that 
poisonous  weeds  have  sprung  up  in  political  parties  that  promise  the  destruction  of 
its  basic  principles. — John  Kirby,  Jr.,  Ex-President  National  Association  of  Manu- 
facturers. 


BY 

JOHN  E.  BENNETT 

OF    THE     SAN     FRANCISCO    BAR 


PRESS    OF 

SCHWABACHER-FREY   STATIONERY   CO. 
SAN     FRANCISCO 


FOREWORD 


The  United  States  Commission  on  Industrial  Relations,  after  con- 
ducting for  nearly  a  year  its  inquiry  into  the  cause  of  the  industrial  unrest 
in  the  United  States,  has  in  the  course  of  its  journey  ings  reached  San 
Francisco,  where  it  is  proceeding  with  hearings,  eliciting  of  all  and  sundry 
facts  and  opinions  in  quest  of  light  and  information  upon  the  great  theme 
which  has  called  it  to  assemble.  It  is  exceedingly  interesting  to  note  that 
on  the  eve  of  the  Commission's  arrival  in  San  Francisco,  its  head,  Mr.  Frank 
P.  Walsh,  a  lawyer  of  Kansas  City,  is  credited  with  saying : 

"The  Chairman  of  this  Commission  has  no  desire  to  conceal  his  own 
belief  that  labor's  groping,  through  its  demand  to  'bargain  collectively/ 
toward  more  freedom  and  more  life,  is  one  of  the  inevitable  processes  of 
democratization  that  cannot  be  permanently  checked.  He  believes  further 
that  much  of  labor's  bitterness  is  a  reaction  from  the  instinctive  resistance 
and  resentment  of  the  surprised  employer  against  this  irresistible  process."* 

In  other  words,  if  the  utterances  of  its  Chairman  reflect  its  views,  the 
Commission  has  concluded,  after  the  hearings  it  has  had,  that  the  labor 
union  with  its  closed  shop  is  a  necessity  in  industry,  and  that  whatever  this 
is  destined  to  develop  into,  must  follow.  This  latter  is  the  Socialistic  State. 
The  Chairman  does  not  say  as  much,  for  he  would  perhaps  fain  not  draw 
the  curtain  to  reveal  that  which  is  behind,  if  it  happens  that  he  has  thought 
in  such  direction.  His  view  must  be  disheartening  enough  to  every  citizen 
who  reflects  upon  it;  but  assuredly  the  Commission  cannot  be  blamed  for 
holding  it.  I  shall  venture  the  assertion  that  not  one  of  the  hundreds  whom 
the  Commission  has  heard  at  its  many  sessions,  has  ever  presented  the  line 
of  reasoning  which  shows  that  the  true  direction  and  the  course  of  safety 
for  .the  people  and  the  nation  is  not  towards  the  labor  union  and  its  con- 
comitant socialism,  but  is  in  accord  with  human  freedom  and  individual 
liberty.  To  the  task  of  so  showing,  this  pamphlet  is  dedicated.  Human 
freedom  is  indeed  on  trial.  Men  love  it,  and  linger  in  the  hope  that  it  can 
be  saved.  Yet  who  comes  forward  to  defend  it!  There  is  abroad  a  wide- 
spread feeling  that  modern  industry  in  its  large  development,  its  combina- 
tions and  the  power  its  unifications  present,  is  in  some  way  incompatible 
with  the  exercise  of  a  full  sphere  of  liberty  by  the  individual.  That 
restrictive  laws  eliminating  a  large  measure  of  what  he  has  heretofore 
conceived  to  be  his  rights,  are  necessary,  and  that  he  is  destined  to  go 
through  life  jacketed  with  limitations  and  rebuffed  by  denials  on  all  sides, 
imposed  by  the  State,  and  assumed  to  be  necessary  in  order  that  his  fellow 
might  subsist.  It  is  my  endeavor  herein  to  show  that  this  is  not  a  fact;  and 

|4M 


"San  Francisco  Bulletin  Aug.  8,  191 17 page 


while  so  far  as  1  i-an  f-;id,  I  soi-iu,  in  l;n\ue  degree,  to  be  traveling  untrodden 
ground,  yet  the  reader  will  find  in  the  thought  nothing  that  is  perplexing 
or  with  which  the  rational  understanding  will  not  readily  agree.  There  is 
nothing  occult  about  political  economy.  It  may  be  stated  as  being  the 
science  of  familiar  things.  The  instructor  in  it  is  less  a  teacher  than  a 
guide,  pointing  out  this  and  that  fact,  all  well  in  the  knowledge  of  his 
hearer,  the  exposition  of  its  truth  consisting  of  the  arrangement,  the  juxta- 
positions in  which  the  facts  are  placed  and  presented.  Economics  deal 
with  the  matters  and  things  with  which  people  come  into  daily  contact. 
It  is  a  body  of  thought  capable  readily  of  being  popularized,  the  great 
questions  of  public  welfare  which  it  holds  being  possible  of  simple  and 
easily  grasped  explanations.  The  "dismal  science"  with  which  Carlyle 
dubbed  the  economics  of  his  day,  was  that  of  the  schools.  The  ' '  theory  of 
rent,"  the  "law  of  diminishing  returns,"  the  "principle  of  population," 
the  "doctrine  of  marginal  utility,"  together  with  such  more  recent  phrases 
as  "economic  monism"  and  "economic  pluralism,"  these  theorems  do  not 
concern  us.  Certain  of  them  are  correct,  others  are  not ;  all  are  useful 
chiefly  to  the  academicians,  and  have  little  influence  upon  practical  affairs. 
Where  they  are  carried  into  the  domain  of  current  thought,  as  instance  in 
the  case  of  Prof.  Farnam,  pointed  out  in  my  last  pamphlet,*  which  remarks 
might  be  extended  to  many  of  the  Professor's  fellow  collegians,  there  is  often 
error  and  confusion.  Let  us  forego  the  schools  in  this  brief  journey  through 
the  region  of  every  day  economics,  which  we  shall  make  in  this  pamphlet, 
and  employ  the  common  knowledge  which  every  ordinarily  educated  mind 
possesses,  and  be  guided  by  our  common  sense.  With  these  instruments  we 
shall  not  only  understand  the  situation  as  it  obtains  through  the  industrial 
and  political  forces  moving  within  the  country,  but  we  shall  see  clearly  the 
direction  in  which  those  forces  are  tending  and  the  ultimate  condition  which 
they  must  inevitably  devolve  upon  the  country.  This  condition  is  the 
highly  centralized  State,  in  which,  under  the  guise  of  using  the  government 
as  an  instrument  for  procuring  to  the  wage  earner  a  larger  share  in  produc- 
tion than  he  is  now  receiving,  destroys  practically  all  rights  and  liberties 
of  the  individual,  and  converges  the  authority  of  the  sovereign  into .  an 
aristocratic  or  monarchical  head,  which  inevitably  soon  assumes  the  depraved 
order  of  such  forms  of  government.  This  is  the  meaning  of  Chairman 
Walsh's  utterances;  and  it  is  the  more  to  be  lamented  that  Congress  and 
the  President,  striving,  as  they  have  recurrently  done,  through  appointment 
of  commissions  to  find  the  wise  and  safe  line  upon  which  to  legislate,  are 
having  repeatedly  turned  in  to  them  by  these  their  creations,  and  under  the 
seal  of  patient  inquiry  and  careful  consideration,  the  very  doctrines  that 
spell  disaster  to  the  nation,  whose  approval  by  such  bodies  but  hasten  the 
day  of  the  destruction  of  all  that  aggregate  of  natural  and  civil  rights,  the 
recognition  of  which  by  government  was  the  task  and  toil  of  centuries. 
Why  this  should  be  is  very  perplexing.  It  can  only  be  accounted  for  by 

""Japan's  Message  to  America." 


such  a  remark  as  was  lately  made  by  James  J.  Hill,  when  asked  why 
railroad  gross  earnings  all  over  the  nation  were  falling  behind ;  he  replied : 
"The  business  is  simply  not  in  the  country."  And  so  say  I  of  and  for 
this  Commission  and  its  erroneous  views  as  expressed  by  its  Chairman, 
which  have  concreted  into  a  conclusion  after  scores  of  hearings  of  business 
men,  politicians,  statesmen,  economic  professors,  labor  unionists,  socialists 
and  sundry  others,  ' '  the  knowledge  is  simply  not  in  the  country. ' '  And  in 
so  saying  I  would  not  underrate  in  the  slightest  degree  the  grand  work 
already  done  on  behalf  of  the  Constitution  by  such  men  as  ex-President 
Taft,  Senator  Elihu  Root  and  others,  whose  utterances  have  been  of 
inestimable  help  to  me.  But  though  they  have  spoken  bravely  and  well, 
there  has  been  no  attempt  to  carry  by  any  efficient  means  into  the  con- 
sciences of  the  people  the  fact  that  there  exists  before  the  country  a  clear 
cut  issue  of  the  Constitution  on  one  side  and  Socialism  on  the  other,  and 
that  all  of  the  movement  of  which  this  eight-hour  labor  initiative  is  an 
instance  and  a  part,  the  minimum  wage,  working  men's  insurance,  the 
legalizing  by  Congress  of  the  unlawful  acts  of  the  labor  union,  and  much 
else,  is  a  part  of  the  general  direction  toward  conversion  of  the  nation  into 
the  Socialistic  State ;  and  men  seem  to  see  no  light  in  the  opposite  direction 
under  which  constitutional  government  can  be  preserved.  This  is  an 
exceedingly  unhappy  situation;  and  if  the  publication  of  this  pamphlet 
shall  indicate  to  those  of  the  country  interested  in  preserving  its  liberties 
the  course  to  pursue  in 'such  behalf,  I  shall  feel  that  I  have  rendered 
a  service. 

This  article  was  almost  in  manuscript  before  the  outbreak  of  the 
existing  war  in  Europe,  and  I  have  not  attempted  to  change  it  in  any 
particular  owing  to  that  catastrophe.  The  economic  problems  which  will 
be  presented  in  those  countries  now  the  theatre  of  the  war,  after  hostilities 
are  over — as  to  what  shaping  effect  these  will  have  on  the  several  govern- 
ments, I  have  not  attempted  to  go  into.  Such  does  not  concern  us  in  this 
inquiry.  The  narrative  of  the  rapid  drawing  toward  the  Socialistic  State 
of  certain  of  these  countries  which  was  going  on  at  the  commencement  of 
the  war,  as  herein  shown,  may  be  taken  as  a  condition  whose  trend  is  to  be 
resumed  with  redoubled  fury  after  the  war  is  over,  at  which  time  the 
conditions  which  have  moved  the  labor  element  toward  the  mass  strike, 
will  have  become  highly  intensified.  Indeed,  it  is  already  manifest  that 
when  the  war  closes  the  world  shall  have  been  driven  far  along  in  the 
Socialistic  program.  It  is  always  the  result  of  war  to  fasten  upon  the 
nations  experiencing  it  erroneous  economic  policies  from  which  they  suffer 
for  years  after,  the  effects  of  their  operations  visiting  more  injury  than 
the  war  itself.  Our  protective  tariff  system  was  a  heritage  of  our  civil 
war;  and  already  we  have  reports  of  Socialistic  schemes  in  France  to  care 
for  the  600,000  people  whom  the  press  dispatches  tell  us  are  out  of  work 
in  Paris  alone.  There  are  plans  to  start  government  work  shops  and  labor 
yards  and  "far  reaching  charitable  work  with  va»t  soup  kitchens  run  by 

5 


the  labor  unions. ' '  While  in  the  United  States,  by  reason  of  a  warped  and 
erroneous  shipping  policy,  finding  ourselves  without  bottoms  under  a  flag 
safe  upon  the  seas  in  which  to  carry  the  commerce  of  the  country,  Congress 
is  arranging  to  appropriate  $25,000,000  to  buy  merchant  vessels  and  start 
the  nation  into  the  commercial  shipping  business.  Enormous  sums  are 
appropriated  for  war  materials  whose  diversion  from  the  channels  of 
industry  increase  prices  and  so  lessen  the  opportunities  for  labor,  and 
intensify  the  demand  and  the  apparent  necessity  for  the  State  moving  into 
industry  to  provide  work  for  the  people.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
call  for  the  State  to  enter  industry  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  initiative  of 
the  people  of  the  nation  has  been  dislocated  by  erroneous  governmental 
policies,  so  that  it  cannot  provide  jobs  for  the  people  itself. 

As  I  have  shown,  Socialism  in  Germany,  Russia,  Austria  and  France 
need  cause  those  governments  little  concern.  Monarchies  more  or  less 
absolute  can  swallow  Socialism  with  an  easy  gulp.  Prince  Bismarck  had 
strong  Socialistic  leanings,  notwithstanding  the  antagonism  of  his  adminis- 
tration to  Socialistic  propaganda,  and  he  apprehended  no  inconvenience  to 
the  government  or  to  the  reigning  house,  should  it  become  ascendant.  The 
heads  of  prevailing  industries  would,  under  Socialism,  continue  heads  of 
such  industries,  wearing  only  the  badge  of  government,  and  drawn  thereby 
into  closer  relation  to  the  crown ;  the  nation  itself  developing  into  two 
camps,  an  industrial  camp  and  an  armed  camp,  each  equally  subject  to  the 
sovereign  absolutism.  It  is  only  in  those  countries  whose  governments  are 
predicated  upon  individual  freedom,  particularly  England  and  the  United 
States,  that  will  be  profoundly  changed  by  Socialism,  and  the  initiative 
and  industrial  opportunities  and  activities  of  their  individual  citizens  prac- 
tically obliterated.  There  can  be  no  question  about  the  ultimate  upshot  of 
these  conditions,  for  the  world  does  not  know  any  other  direction  than  that 
to  which  it  is  now  tending,  the  finger  of  the  schools  being  definitely  pointed 
to  the  goal  of  Socialism. 


The   Industrial   Unrest 


BY  JOHN  E.  BENNETT 


The  Secretary  of  State  of  California,  having  certified  to  the  electors 
of  the  State  the  initiative  proposals  hereinafter  set  forth,*  to  be  voted  upon 
at  the  election  to  be  held  in  November,  1914,  each  of  which  would  be  enacted 
into  law  by  a  majority  of  the  voters  balloting  in  their  favor,  a  number  of 
leading  citizens  of  San  Francisco  requested  of  Mr.  Bennett  his  views  upon 
the  measure,  to  which  the  latter  replied  with  the  following  thesis : 


Man  belongs  to  that  order  of  animals  which  by  their  nature  are 
gregarious ;  that  is,  animals  who  by  instinct  assemble  into  communities  and 
exist  in  association  with  each  other.  The  wild  horses  or  the  buffalo  that 
sometime  roamed  the  prairies,  the  wild  geese  that  fly  in  flocks,  are  instances 
of  this  character  of  life.  They  differ  in  this  quality  of  sociability  from 
those  forms  that  are  either  solitary  in  habit,  like  the  hyena  or  the  blue  heron, 
or  that  are  addicted  to  an  equally  isolated  family  life,  like  the  lion  or  the  fox. 

Whatever  may  be  the  sense  that  causes  sheep  to  browse  in  droves  or 
antelopes  to  move  in  herds,  in  man  there  are  reasons  of  intellect  as  well  as 
of  emotion,  that  cause  him  to  abide  with  his  fellows  in  tribes  and-  nations. 
These  reasons  may  be  aggregated  into  a  single  phrase — mutual  helpfulness. 

The  movement  of  man  in  the  line  of  progression,  from  his  earliest  type 
to  his  highest  modern  creation,  has  been,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  human 
race,  extremely  irregular.  Some  peoples,  even  within  the  realm  of  civilized 
nations,  are  centuries  ahead  of  others,  while  there  yet  abide  naked  and 
savage  tribes ;  and  farther  into  the  jungles  explorations  of  today  have 
discovered  peoples  in  their  primitive  condition,  so  close  indeed  to  the  apes, 
that  they  may  almost  be  regarded  as  survivals  of  the  Pithecanthropus 
erectus. 

In  whatever  stage  of  progress  men  may  be,  there  is  government 
amongst  them.  Government  may  be  defined  as  the  existence  and  exercise 
of  a  power  vested  in  human  hands,  compelling  the  individual  to  do  or 


"The  first  initiative  bill  is  as  follows: 

"Any  employer  who  shall  require  or  permit,  or  who  shall  suffer  or  permit  any 
overseer,  superintendent,  foreman,  or  other  agent  of  such  employer,  to  require  or  permit 
any  person  to  work  more  than  forty-eight  hours  in  a  week  of  seven  days, 
eight  hours  in  one  week,  except  in  case  of  extraordinary  emergency  caused  by  fire,  flood 
or  danger  to  life  or  property,  shall  be  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor,  and  upon  conviction 
thereof  shall  be  fined  not  less  than  $50  nor  more  than  $500  or  imprisoned  in  the  county 
jail  not  less  than  10  nor  more  than  90  days,  or  both  so  fined  and  imprisoned." 

The  second  measure  is  more  in  detail  and  punishes  anyone  who  shall  hire  or  require 
any  person  to  work  more  than  forty-eight  hours  in  a  week  of  seven  days. 


refrain  from  some  act  or  conduct  by  reason  of  the  common  welfare.  The 
necessity  for  government  arises  with  the  human  through  his  need  of  sub- 
sistence and  his  need  of  defense.  Men  can  better  hunt  game  which  yields 
clothing  as  well  as  food,  or  oppose  wild  beasts,  when  they  proceed  in 
companies.  These  circumstances  naturally  create  government  which  finds 
its  earliest  and  simplest  expression  in  mere  leadership.  Men  are  by  nature 
different,  not  only  in  their  physical  statures  and  capabilities  but  in  their 
several  psychologies.  They  vary  vastly  in  all  faculties  of  the  mind,  in 
intensity  of  will,  in  all  those  attributes  which  we  commonly  comprehend  in 
the  phrase  "force  of  character."  So  if  you  throw  a  dozen  men,  however 
rude,  abroad  in  a  country,  and  set  them  or  they  set  themselves  to  any  effort, 
there  will  presently  develop  amongst  them  some  man  whose  adaptability 
to  the  given  task  at  once  asserts  itself,  and  finds  instant  acknowledgment 
from  the  others.  And  while  there  may  be  several  of  these,  the  superior 
perception  and  suggestion  of  one  will  cause  the  others  to  fall  to  his  support, 
and  the  entire  company  will  move  under  a  single  direction.  This  quality 
of  leadership  is  inherent  in  human  action ;  it  is  the  essential  of  all  coordina- 
tion amongst  the  units  of  human  kind ;  it  obtains  with  equal  force  wherever 
free  performance  exists,  amongst  the  peoples  of  the  highest  civilization  as 
among  those  of  the  most  elementary  groups.  The  leader  of  the  chase 
becomes  the  ruler  of  the  tribe,  and  rule  imports  government. 

Looking  at  this  initial  stage  of  society  it  can  be  seen  that  the  line 
between  the  ruler  and  the  people,  as  to  which  is  in  ascendance,  is  not  clear; 
and  whichever  hypothesis  is  accepted  must  be  a  conception  merely ;  whether 
the  people  are  of  primary  importance  and  the  ruler  is  their  servant,  or 
whether  the  ruler  is  uppermost  and  the  people  are  his  servants,  is  a 
question  which  does  not  long  endure  before  it  is  entirely  manifest  that 
whatever  may  be  the  condition  theoretically,  in  practical  operation  the 
ruler  is  supreme  and  the  people  are  inferior  to  him.  It  is  the  quality  of 
the  ruler  that  he  has  the  power  to  bring  the  force  of  the  whole  society 
against  any  member,  or  of  the  majority  against  the  minority.  Such  ability 
would  exalt  him  above  any  individual,  and  the  concept  that  the  aggregate 
of  individuals  comprise  a  quality  of  primacy  which  separately  they  do  not 
contain,  or  if  at  all,  only  in  fractional  degree,  is  too  much  of  an  abstraction 
to  concern  men  in  the  savage  or  the  barbarous  state. 

As  men,  however,  attain  to  civilization  there  comes  into  their  minds 
the  light  which  shows  them  the  quality  of  government  in  relation  to  the 
people  and  in  relation  to  the  ruler.  And  whatever  may  be  the  kind  or  form 
of  government  existing  in  any  country,  there  remains  in  connection  with  it 
but  two  principles;  one  is  the  Man,  and  the  other  is  the  Ruler.  The  first 
is  where  the  citizen  himself  embodies  all  rights  of  every  kind,  just  as  though 
he  stood  solitary  in  the  midst  of  nature;  and  where  out  of  those  rights 
which  he  possesses  he  cedes  certain  powers  to  an  invisible  entity  called  the 
State,  upon  the  condition  and  for  the  consideration  that  so  endowing  the 
State  the  latter  will  protect  him  in  the  free  exercise  of  the  rights  he 


reserves.  Having  created  this  establishment,  he  appoints  a  citizen  to 
administer  it.  Very  obviously  the  real  thing  in  that  situation  is  not  the 
ruler,  but  the  State;  the  latter  endures  and  goes  on;  the  former  may  be 
swept  aside  at  any  instant,  and  the  State  is  in  no  wise  affected  by  such 
removal ;  there  is  merely  a  vacancy  created,  to  be  filled  by  another  appointee. 

Under  this  concept  it  is  essential  that  the  State  be  an  institution 
explicitly  defined  in  writing.  The  document  which  expresses  the  powers 
which  the  citizen  cedes,  we  call  a  constitution;  and  under  this  constitution 
there  is  formulated  a  body  of  laws,  none  of  which  may  be  in  contravention 
of  the  constitution  but  all  thereof  must  be  in  accord  with  it,  and  aimed  to 
give  effect  to  its  provisions. 

This  government  is  what  is  called  a  Commonwealth,  as  the  form 
expressed  in  the  Ruler  is  called  a  Monarchy;  or  if  the  government  be  a 
group  of  individuals  possessing  equal  powers,  then  it  is  called  an  Aris- 
tocracy. The  powers  ceded  by  the  citizen  to  form  the  Commonwealth, 
however,  have  a  very  definite  sphere.  They  are  such  as  to  preserve  to  him 
on  one  hand  the  largest  scope  of  free  action,  and  on  the  other  to  secure  him 
and  make  him  safe  in  its  exercise;  to,  in  other  words,  place  the  entire 
community  behind  his  use  of  his  rights.  Those  rights,  it  must  be  seen,  are 
the  rights  which  each  separate  person  in  the  country  possesses,  and  they 
comprise  in  each  individual  the  whole  zone  of  human  action  up  to  the  point 
where  their  exercise  comes  into  conflict  with  the  exercise  by  another  indi- 
vidual of  like  rights.  I  have  a  right  to  possess  property ;  my  neighbor  has 
a  like  right  to  possess  property;  but  I  may  not  possess  myself  of  his 
property  against  his  will,  for  then  I  invade  his  right  to  possess  property. 
It  is  in  this  margin,  or  on  this  edge  of  rights  of  individuals  where  they  lie 
against  rather  than  touch  each  other,  that  the  function  of  government 
exists,  the  quality  of  which  is  to  hold  a  balanced  hand  between  them. 

So  then  we  have  man  under  a  Commonwealth,  holding  all  rights  up 
to  where  their  use  impairs  the  use  of  like  rights  by  his  neighbor,  at  this 
point  transferring  certain  powers  to  form  the  State  which  is  installed  to 
secure  him  in  the  possession  and  use  of  his  rights,  the  entire  defined  by  a 
written  constitution,  which  is  elaborated  in  written  laws,  whose  meaning 
is  construed  by  a  judiciary  and  enforced  by  an  executive. 

The  Commonwealth  is  such,  however,  only  so  long  as  the  rights  and 
powers  between  the  State  and  the  citizen  are  thus  defined  and  balanced; 
when  there  is  encroachment  upon  the  respective  powers,  by  either  one  side 
or  the  other,  the  citizen  or  the  State,  the  government  is  no  longer  that  of  a 
Commonwealth.  If  the  citizen  withdraws  any  of  these  powers  from  the 
State,  the  balance  is  destroyed  and  the  condition  that  supervenes  is  called 
anarchy.  This  order  of  things  is,  however,  theoretical  only;  anarchy  can 
never  exist  as  a  status  of  Society  in  any  wide  scope  or  permanence.  Its 
very  existence  will  revive  to  suppress  it  the  law  which  it  has  overcome.  Its 
assertion  will  drive  the  government  quickly  into  the  most  centralized  and 
absolute  form,  the  very  opposite  to  that  which  the  anarchist  desires.  For 

9 


anarchy  is  chaos,  where  the  will  of  each  is  supreme ;  a  condition  always 
attended  with  an  uprush  of  the  evil  elements  in  the  affected  community, 
for  whose  submission  to  order  law  is  necessary.  Even  if  there  be  imagined 
a  society  in  which  there  were  none  disposed  to  willful  wrongdoing,  law 
would  nevertheless  be  requisite  as  a  mere  guide  to  conduct  by  which  all 
might  adjust  themselves;  for  men  with  the  best  intentions  will  differ  in 
their  opinions  as  to  their  several  rights — differences  which  would  quickly 
provoke  disorder  were  there  not  some  fitting  measure  by  which  rights  might 
be  determined.  It  is,  indeed,  most  ordinary  that  not  only  will  men  hold 
contrary  views  of  interests  to  which  they  are  related  as  principals,  but 
they  are  equally  prone  to  contradictions  w^here,  removed  from  participation 
in  the  subject-matter,  they  are  seeking  to  adjust  the  differences  of  others ; 
with  a  rule  before  them  to  which  to  reconcile  the  admitted  facts — they  will 
frequently  disagree;  as  witness  the  dissents  to  legal  opinions  of  justices 
of  courts. 

If,  however,  the  Commonwealth  encroaches  upon  the  rights  of  the  citi- 
zen, then  is  it  also  no  longer  a  Commonwealth,  but  falls  into  the  reduced 
sphere  of  a  democracy;  for  the  latter  as  a  depraved  form  of  the  Common- 
wealth answers  to  the  degradation  of  Monarchy  into  tyranny  and  Aris- 
tocracy into  oligarchy.  Aristotle  was  undoubtedly  right  when  he  said  that 
as  between  these  perversions  of  good  government,  there  was  no  choice,  for 
none  was  better  than  the  other. 

,  We  have,  therefore,  the  Commonwealth  comprising  the  State,  formed 
by  the  citizen  of  ceded  powers  for  the  purpose  recited — this  is  one  of  the 
two  principles  or  stati  in  government  to  which  I  have  adverted ;  the  second 
and  only  other  is  that  in  which  the  citizen  has  no  rights  whatever,  but  all 
rights  are  vested  in  the  State,  and  the  citizen,  there  a  subject,  holds  only 
such  privileges  as  the  State  may  permit  him  to  enjoy,  and  which  may  be 
withdrawn  at  the  will  of  the  ruler.  This  last  is  absolutism,  and  it  is  opposed 
to  individualism,  which  is  the  condition  of  the  man  under  the  Common- 
wealth. As  between  these  two  there  is  no  middle  ground  in  government. 
Whatever  order  of  things  exists  in  any  nation  that  is  not  one  or  the  other, 
presents  not  a  status  but  a  tendency — an  oscillation  in  one  direction  or  the 
other,  which  movement,  however  long  a  period  of  time  the  process  may 
require,  will  not  stop  until  its  goal  is  reached. 

An  absolutism  may  be  either  a  democracy,  an  oligarchy  or  a  tyranny ; 
it  is  not  necessarily  a  State  under  the  domination  of  a  single  ruler ;  although 
its  gravitation  is  in  that  direction,  and  if  uninterrupted  in  its  course, 
ultimately  develops  into  such  autocracy.  Absolutisms  are  extremely 
common  in  every  day  affairs.  Take  the  ordinary  private  or  quasi-public 
corporation,  ruled  by  a  board  of  directors,  elected  by  the  stockholders,  and 
who  may,  under  a  democracy,  stand  as  the  counterpart  of  the  administrative 
and  legislative  authority  of  a  State  installed  by  the  voters.  A  single 
individual  will  often  dominate  the  board.  Usually  he  expresses  himself 
through  a  group  or  majority  of  the  members,  who  are  committed  to  his  rule, 

10 


in  whose  acts  the  minority  acquiesces,  being  conscious  of  the  uselessness  of 
resistance.  We  have  just  had  an  exhibition  of  the  operation  of  this  influence 
in  the  testimony  of  President  Mellen  of  the  New  Haven  Railroad  Company, 
who  narrated  how  the  directors  of  that  board  were  controlled  in  its  affairs 
by  Mr.  J.  P.  Morgan,  notwithstanding  Mr.  Mellen  himself  was  the  nominal 
head  of  the  corporation.  Wherever  MacGrogan  sits,  that's  the  head  of 
the  table, "  is  a  principle  present  or  tending  in  all  associations  of  men.  The 
strongest  rule.  Not  only  do  they  control  in  action,  but  their  exertions  are 
equally  directed  to  holding  themselves  in  place ;  it  is  only  when  the  excesses 
of  MacGrogan  produces  revolt  among  the  stockholders  that  he  becomes 
dislodged;  for  an  indifferent  stockholding  proletariat,  content  to  let  things 
alone  so  long  as  prosperity  abides,  will  like  all  democracies,  vote  favorably 
to  the  dominant  rule  upon  the  presentation  to  it,  by  such  authority,  of 
favorable  statements. 

As  to  what  time  the  absolutism  shall  supervene  in  government,  depends 
upon  the  rise  of  the  strong  man,  who,  when  he  arrives,  quickly  threads 
together  the  ravelled  edges  of  authority  and  concentrates  all  power  in  his 
single  self.  The  means  by  which  this  is  done  is  often  war,  civil  or  foreign. 
Though  it  may  transpire  by  ordinary  mutations  and  silent  processes  as  is 
now  proceeding  in  this  country.  Rome  was  a  democracy  when  Caesar  died, 
but  it  was  nevertheless  an  absolutism,  for  the  head  of  the  army  had  come  to 
embody  in  his  person  all  offices;  and  the  term  General,  a  mere  designation 
of  military  rank  and  office,  in  its  Latinized  form  of  Imperator,  came  to  be 
the  title  of  the  emperor.  The  same  phenomenon  occurred  in  England  in 
the  time  of  Cromwell  and  in  France  during  the  period  of  Napoleon.  In 
both  countries  democracy  existed  but  passed  into  imperial  absolutism,  after 
having  endured  a  brief  season  as  a  democratic  absolutism.  For  while  the 
Lord  Protector  was  never  crowned,  any  more  than  Julius  Caesar  was  ever 
crowned,  yet  he  was  in  all  respects  as  complete  an  autocrat  as  was  either 
Caesar  or  Napoleon. 

The  nation  founded  by  our  fathers  of  the  Constitution  was  a  Common- 
wealth. Today  it  stands  depraved  as  a  democracy,  its  tendency  driving 
hard  and  fast  into  imperialistic  autocracy.*  There  may  be  an  interval  of 
some  decades  before  the  coronation  of  an  Emperor  at  Washington,  and 
while  he  may  never  wrear  any  other  title  than  President,  his  tenure  being 
hereditary  or  for  life,  yet  the  constant  drawing  to  the  State  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  citizen  such  remaining  powers  as  he  possesses,  which  is  now 
going  on  everywhere  in  the  country,  is  rapidly  effacing  all  the  individual- 
istic qualities  of  the  form  and  character  of  government  which  was  estab- 
lished by  its  founders.  There  is,  indeed,  no  more  explicit  truth  than  that 
contained  in  the  maxim :  Vigilance  is  the  price  of  liberty.  The  Common- 
wealth, the  most  just  and  perfect  form  of  government  that  can  be  established 
among  men,  under  which  the  largest  possible  zone  of  liberty  is  vouchsafed 
to  the  citizen,  and  which  alone  is  consonant  with  the  very  highest  develop- 


*See  my  pamphlet  "Our  National  Tendency  and  Its  Goal." 

11 


ment  of  civilization — this  order  of  government  cannot  long  endure  without 
the  eyes  of  the  citizen  being  constantly  and  understandingly  fixed  upon  it, 
and  his  energies  placed  to  guard  and  defend  it  in  its  every  aspect.  The 
Commonwealth  which  the  makers  of  the  constitution  ordained  was  by  no 
means  perfect ;  yet  that  constitution  was  sufficiently  broad  in  its  foundations 
resting  upon  human  freedom,  to  have  sustained  any  structure  of  liberty 
which  might  have  been  reared  upon  it;  the  principles  of  liberty  of  man 
were  there;  they  needed  only  to  have  been  carried  out,  expressed  in  legisla- 
tion, interpretation,  and  so  administered,  to  have  evolved  on  this  continent, 
in  this  day  and  time,  the  most  perfect  government,  and  the  highest  human 
happiness,  that  can  exist  upon  earth. 

No  longer  a  Commonwealth,  the  avenue  which  the  existing  democracy 
is  taking,  in  proceeding  toward  monarchy,  is  Socialism.  This  latter  in  its 
purity  is  stated  by  its  leading  exponents  to  be : 

"A  movement  primarily  consisting  of  members  of  the  wealth-producing 
class,  which  seeks  to  control  all  the  powers  of  the  State,  and  to  bring  about 
the  collective  ownership  and  control  of  the  principal  means  of  production 
and  exchange. ' ': 

Another  author  states  its  purpose  as  being  "to  transform  the  State 
into  an  agency  for  the  democratic  administration  of  socialized  industry." 
In  other  words,  it  means  State  ownership  and  operation  of  nearly  all 
industry — nearly  everyone  being  in  the  employ  of  the  State,  which  is  the 
creator  and  giver  of  practically  all  jobs.  We  are  told  by  the  writers  on 
Socialism  that  there  would,  under  such  regime,  exist  entirely  free  action 
on  part  of  the  individual  to  compete  with  the  State,  and  the  authors  from 
whom  I  quote  cite  an  illustration  of  this  idea.t  There  is  no  doubt  that  if 
free  competition  with  the  State  were  left  to  the  individual  the  State  would 
soon  be  driven  out  of  industry,!  for  industrial  organization  conducted  by 


*Spargo  and  Arner,  "Elements  of  Socialism,"  page  5. 

tLet  us  suppose,  then,  that  the  shoemaking  industry  has  been  socialized  and  is  now 
carried  on  in  State-owned  factories.  The  citizens  as  a  whole  are  satisfied  with  the 
results.  The  shoes  are  good;  the  workers  are  well  paid;  the  consumers  of  shoes  get 
better  value  than  would  be  possible  under  capitalist  production.  But  A,  who  is  a  shoe- 
maker, is  a  man  of  marked  individuality.  He  hates  his  employment  in  the  State  factory, 
where  he  is  only  a  maker  of  parts  of  shoes.  He  wants  to  make  shoes  by  hand  in  the  old- 
fashioned  way,  to  put  into  each  pair  of  shoes  something  of  his  own  individuality.  So  long 
as  he  can  find  no  one  who  wants  shoes  made  in  that  way,  no  one  who  is  dissatisfied  with 
the  factory  product,  he  will  be  a  dissatisfied  man;  his  individuality  will  be  repressed,  not 
by  the  State,  as  such,  but  by  the  general  indifference  of  society  to  his  point  of  view.  In 
this  respect  he  will  be  no  worse  off  than  are  all  such  workers  in  present  society.  But 
suppose  that  B,  who  wears  shoes  but  does  not  make  them,  dislikes  the  factory  product, 
and  desires  above  all  else  to  wear  things  made  specially  for  him,  things  which  express 
the  individuality  of  the  makers  and  of  himself.  If  under  such  circumstances  A  and  B 
can  agree  upon  terms,  there  is  no  reason  why  A  should  not  make  shoes  for  B.  There  is 
no  exploitation.  Such  competition  with  the  State  on  the  part  of  private  producers  might 
well  be  encouraged  rather  than  discouraged.  If  the  private  production  made  headway 
faster  than  the  State  production,  despite  the  enormous  advantages  enjoyed  by  the  State, 
it  would  mean  that  its  efficiency  was  greater.  In  that  case,  the  State  factory  would  have 
to  improve  its  methods  or  fail  and  be  supplanted  by  the  more  successful  private  produc- 
tion. Spargo  and  Arner,  etc.,  p.  228. 

Jin  1848  the  French  Provisional  Government  in  fulfillment  of  its  promise  to  provide 
work  for  all  who  claimed  it,  established  ateliers  nationaux,  or  national  workshops,  which 
was  corning  very  close  to  the  realization  of  the  Socialistic  dream.  A  great  establishment 
for  the  manufacture  of  clothing  was  set  up  in  Paris.  The  Government  provided  the 
buildings  rent  free,  and  furnished  the  working  capital,  charging  no  interest.  It  gave  an 
immediate  order  for  25,000  uniforms  for  the  National  Guard  and  promised  further  orders 
so  as  to  keep  the  plant  in  operation  and  agreed  to  pay  the  same  price  as  private 
contractors  asked,  eleven  francs  per  uniform.  Fifteen  hundred  men  were  put  to  work, 
to  whom  the  Government  advanced  two  francs  a  day  as  "subsistence  money"  pending  a 
final  division  of  the  profits.  When  the  accounts  came  to  be  squared  it  was  found  that 

12 


the  State  can  never  compete  on  equal  terms  with  that  operated  by  private 
enterprise;  the  rock  upon  which  all  State  owned  industries,  attempted  to 
be  run  in  antagonism  to  individual  effort,  fall  to  pieces  is  initiative  and 
efficiency.  These  elements  the  State  concern  does  not  and  cannot  possess 
in  as  high  degree  as  those  privately  run,  for  the  reason  that  with  the 
former  the  continuance  of  the  establishment  does  not  depend  upon  the 
production  of  a  product  that  shall  find  a  profitable  market,  and  the  spur 
of  competition  in  the  market  is  removed.  From  the  private  plant,  however, 
competition  is  not  removed  but  is  constantly  in  energetic  operation,  driving 
the  firm  to  a  higher  and  ever  higher  degree  of  economy  and  efficiency  in 
order  to  hold  its  place  in  the  market. 

There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that  if  Socialism  became  the  policy  of  the 
nation  very  short  shift  would  soon  be  made  of  concerns  competing  with  the 
government.  The  people  of  the  nation,  then  committed  to  the  idea  of 
Socialism,  would  quickly  regard  as  public  enemies,  as  common  pirates, 
those  individual  concerns  which  were  underselling  the  State  shops  in  the 
market,  and  so  causing  the  latter  to  default  in  their  running  expenses, 
which  the  people  would  have  to  make  up  through  increase  of  taxes,  if  the 
entire  structure  of  Socialism  was  not  to  go  into  the  dust.  We  can  well 
imagine  the  argument  which  would  be  put  forth  in  that  day  in  such  a  case : 
"What  can  be  the  difference  between  people  paying  more  for  their  goods 
to  the  people's  factories  than  the  sweatshops  charge,  and  having  to  make 
up  out  of  their  taxes  the  losses  which  by  selling  cheaper  the  latter  bring 
upon  the  national  establishments  ? "  It  would  soon  be  found  that  in  running 
shoe  factories  and  tailor  shops  the  policy  of  the  government  would  be  the 


instead  of  profits  there  was  a  loss  and  that  the  two  francs  a  day  paid  to  the  workmen  as 
subsistence  money  worked  out  as  the  equivalent  of  sixteen  francs  for  a  uniform,  instead 
of  eleven,  the  price  by  private  contract;  while  the  subsistence  money,  which  was  only 
another  term  for  wages,  of  two  francs  a  day,  was  less  than  that  which  the  journeyman 
tailors  earned  in  private  employ.  Summed  up,  this  was  the  result  of  the  experiment;  the 
Government  paid  five  francs  more  for  a  uniform  than  if  it  had  bought  it  in  the  open 
market  besides  losing  the  amount  invested  in  the  plant  and  the  interest  on  the  money 
advanced,  while  the  working  men  received  a  lower  wage  than  private  employers  paid. 
A  great  many  employers  were  ruined  by  the  competition  of  the  State  and  much  distress 
followed. 

According  to  contemporary  accounts  the  scheme  failed  because  incentive  was  destroyed. 
The  scheme  contemplated  an  equal  division  of  the  profits  among  the  1500  men  employed, 
but  as  each  man  was  working  not  for  himself,  but  for  all  the  others,  no  man  thought  it 
necessary  to  put  forth  his  full  energy,  as  the  others  would  make  up  for  his  dishonesty, 
and  as  every  man  conceived  the  same  selfish  idea,  the  daily  output  was  reduced  and  the 
cost  of  manufacturing  necessarily  increased.  A.  Maurice  Low,  North  American  Review, 
February,  1913. 

Contractors  Best,  Says  Supervisor. — When  the  proposed  increase  of  the  street  repair 
department's  allowance  for  several  months  to  come  was  under  consideration  by  the  Super- 
visors' Street  Committee  yesterday,  the  increase  being  to  enable  the  department  to  pave 
certain  streets  before  the  exposition  opens,  Street  Superintendent  McCoy  admitted  that 
he  could  not  put  down  new  asphalt  pavement  at  the  price  for  which  contractors  lately  have 
taken  such  work.  Supervisor  Thomas  Jennings,  who  favored  getting  bids  from  contractors 
for  much  of  the  work  immediately  required,  instead  of  having  it  all  done  by  McCoy's 
department,  said  :  "The  city  cannot  do  the  work  as  economically  as  the  contractors, 
because  it  does  not  get  as  much  service  out  of  the  men.  They  loaf  and  do  as  they  please, 
and  when  they  are  hauled  up,  the  Board  of  Works  and  the  Civil  Service  Commission  give 
them  another  chance. — San  Francisco  Chronicle,  Sept.  4,  1914. 

Commenting  editorially  on  the  above,  the  Chronicle  says :  That  was  a  reckless  remark 
of  Supervisor  Jennings.  Does  he  not  remember  that  that  was  proved  long  ago  by  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce,  and  that,  as  a  result,  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  was  put  on  trial 
and  not  the  alleged  loiterers?  We  see  the  political  end  of  Supervisor  Jennings.  Another 
reason  for  the  extra  cost  is  that  the  Board  of  Works,  without  any  authority  of  law,  makes 
a  present  of  $50,000  from  the  public  treasury  a  year  to  the  street  employes  by  giving  them 
each  week  half  a  day's  pay  without  asking  any  return.  That  is  what  Superintendent 
McCoy  says  he  does,  and  it  must  be  so.  Why  the  Board  of  Works  authorizes  this  gift  of 
the  people's  money  is  evident  enough.  It  is  good  politics. 

13 


same  as  that  it  now  employs  in  running  the  mails,  viz. :  It  must  arrest  its 
competitors  and  lock  them  up  in  jail. 

We  see,  therefore,  the  ideal.  This  is  offensive  enough  to  millions  of 
our  countrymen,  nurtured  at  the  breast  of  the  constitution,  imbibing  there- 
from its  spirit  of  freedom  and  equal  right.  The  notion  of  a  government  job 
at  doing  something  where  they  can  fit  in  does  not  attract  them.  The  idea 
that  they  must  exist  upon  the  favor  of  some  political  boss,  who  holds  his 
particular  job  by  standing  securely  in  with  the  powers  above  him,  does  not 
appeal  to  them.  What  they  want  is  a  condition  where,  if  the  job  does  not 
suit  them,  they  can  quit  and  take  another  somewhere  else,  more  favorably 
circumstanced,  and  they  want  to  see  jobs  in  plenty,  and  wages  good.  That 
is  the  natural  condition,  the  state  of  things  as  they  ought  to  be,  and  as  they 
will  be  when  the  errors  of  governmental  policy,  with  the  harmful  laws 
which  I  am  pointing  out  in  these  pamphlets,  are  removed. 

The  restful  elysium  which  the  Socialists  conceive  of  everyone  having 
a  government  job  for  life  with  easy  work  and  short  hours  on  good  pay,  with 
pensions  and  perquisites  at  the  end,  is  very  different  from  the  manner  in 
which  such  job  would  materialize  under  the  government  which  they  seek 
to  install.  For  while  they  talk  of  "democratic  administration,"  meaning, 
without  doubt,  the  administration  of  a  Commonwealth,  yet  this  idea  is  in 
human  experience  completely  at  variance  with  the  quality  of  an  autocracy. 
No  highly  centralized  State,  which  the  Socialists'  edifice  essentially  is, 
could  long  exist,  or  exist  at  all,  without  forming  of  itself  a  monarchy, 
whether  the  monarch  were  crowned  or  not.  Indeed,  the  very  process  of 
drawing  to  a  head  in  the  evolution  of  the  Socialist  structure,  with  the 
constitution  overcome  and  law  subverted  to  the  will  of  a  ruler,  would  create 
and  is  now  tending  to  create,  a  monarchical  establishment.  We  do  not 
have  to  try  to  imagine  what  this  condition  would  be,  we  have  only  to  look 
into  the  past  and  see  what  it  actually  was,  when  it  existed.  Our  Socialist 
authors  properly  quote  de  Lamennais  as  saying :  "If  we  separate  it  from 
the  past,  the  present  is  silent  as  to  the  future."  The  most  Socialistic 
nation  which  has  ever  appeared  on  earth  is  today,  and  always  has  been, 
Russia,  albeit  the  Marxian  Socialist  propaganda  has  been  consistently 
opposed  there  by  the  government.  The  fact  nevertheless  is  that  the  Russian 
autocrat  has  only  to  expand  his  wings  to  embrace  the  ownership  and 
operation  of  all  industrial  property  and  all  that  is  ideal  in  Socialism  would 
be  o'btained.  The  Czar,  as  rapidly  as  he  can,  is  now  doing  this  very  thing.* 

*A  St.  Petersburg  press  letter  states  that  the  Czar  of  all  the  Russians  and  his  advisers 
feel  that  there  is  danger  to  autocratic  power  in  the  prosperity  of  an  independent  producing 
and  trading  class,  and  that  the  only  safe  course  is  to  use  the  power  already  possessed  to 
get  possession  of  everything  else  in  the  empire. 

The  Russian  Government  already  controls  all  the  means  of  communication,  most  of 
the  ready  money  in  the  country,  dominates  the  banking  system,  has  a  monopoly  of  the 
liquor  trade,  owns  about  one-sixth  of  the  land  area  of  the  empire  and  virtually  controls 
the  larger  private  industries  as  the  greatly  preponderating  purchaser.  This,  however,  is 
not  enough.  The  autocracy  is  alarmed  at  the  financial  independence  of  the  political 
subdivisions  and  feels  that  it  is  essential  to  its  safety  that  control  of  local  finances  be 
centralized,  and  that  the  entire  land  area  pass  into  the  possession  of  the  State.  Russia 
is  the  richest  "state"  in  Europe  and  its  people  the  poorest.  A  Russian  economist  estimates 
that  the  average  annual  income  of  the  peasantry,  who  constitute  four-fifths  of  the 
population,  is  not  over  $156  per  annum.  As  a  result  of  the  suppression  of  private  enter- 

14 


Industrialism  has  come  to  be  the  leading  influence  of  the  nation.  Autocracy 
has  always  laid  hands  upon  and  assimilated  whatever  was  the  most  cogent 
force,  besides  itself,  within  the  realm.  From  the  beginning  it  has  assembled 
and  directed,  through  militarism,  the  spirit  of  combat ;  for  years  its  chiefest 
ally  was  religion;  today  it  is  industrialism.  Nothing  is  plainer  than  that 
such  autocracies  as  Germany,  Austria,  even  France,  with  its  nominal  repub- 
licanism, are  rapidly  becoming  monarchical  socialisms.  In  Germany  the 
government,  in  addition  to  owning  the  public  utilities,  is  acquiring  the 
stock  control  of  every  large  corporation  in  the  country.*  It  is  indeed  now 
largely  Socialistic,  yet  in  no  sense  is  the  condition  of  the  laboring  man 
better  in  that  country  than  it  is  elsewhere  in  Europe,  and  for  reasons  which 
I  shall  herein  later  discuss.  Up  until  1853  Russia's  laboring  people  were 
the  direct  charges  of  the  State,  which  was  burdened  with  their  maintenance, 
whose  duty  it  was  to  find  them  jobs  and  who  had  to  support  them  when 
they  were  out  of  employment.  There  was  an  absolute  power  at  the  top, 
and  there  was  a  numberless  multitude  at  the  bottom  who  had  no  care  for 
the  morrow,  because  the  State  would  supply  their  needs.  I  can  remember 
when  I  was  a  boy  my  father  telling  me  of  taking  his  ship  into  a  port  in  the 
Baltic,  and  of  the  vessel  unloading  there.  ' '  Our  stevedores, ' '  he  said,  ' '  were 
furnished  by  the  government.  They  worked  during  daylight ;  that  is,  from 
sunrise  to  dark.  They  received  no  wages,  but  the  government  supported 
them.  At  noon  an  officer  would  come  around  and  give  each  man  a  large 
piece  of  black  bread;  this  he  would  eat,  with  a  little  grease  taken  from 
our  cook's  slush  barrel,  or  anything  else  he  could  find." 

The  movement  toward  Socialism  has  rapidly  increased  in  the  United 
States  during  the  last  two  decades.  In  1892  the  Socialist  party  vote  was 
21,164;  in  1896,  36,274;  in  1900,  127,553;  in  1904,  433,542;  in  1908, 
434,618 ;  in  1910,  607,674.  It  was  estimated  that  the  election  of  1912  would 
show  the  Socialist  vote  2,000,000  out  of  the  approximate  total  vote 
15,000,000,  f  but  the  vote  was  in  fact  927,367.  Mr.  Debs,  the  Socialist 
candidate,  declared  that  much  of  his  vote  was  included  in  the  returns  of 
Mr.  Roosevelt,  aggregating  4,123,206;  and  there  are  many  reasons  for 
believing  this  statement  to  be  true. 


prise,  land  and  other  values  are  the  lowest  in  Europe  and  the  national  income  per  capita 
the  smallest. 

Russia  is  nearer  to  socialism  than  any  other  country  in  the  world.  The  fact  that  it  is 
an  autocracy  should  rather  favor  whatever  increase  of  prosperity  is  possible  under  a 
Socialistic  system,  for  it  is  much  more  to  the  interest  of  an  hereditary  autocrat  that  his 
people  be  prosperous  than  to  a  more  or  less  changeable  bureaucracy. 

It  is,  of  course,  true  that  the  Russian  people  do  not  like  economic  slavery  and  that 
such  of  them  as  have  education  desire  to  escape  from  it  through  political  action,  which 
results  in  sternly  repressive  and  cruel  action  directed  against  the  educated  classes. 
Those,  however,  constitute  but  a  small  minority  of  the  people.  The  masses  are  unedu- 
cated, superstitious  beyond  measure,  accustomed  to  submission,  and  would  be  content  if 
they  enjoyed  reasonable  prosperity.  This,  we  may  be  sure,  the  autocrat  desires  for  them 
and  endeavors  to  secure  according  to  his  lights.  (San  Francisco  Chronicle,  April  12,  1914.) 
*Germany's  Monarchical  Socialism,  by  Elmer  Roberts. 

Dusseldorf,  a  city  of  400,000,  located  on  the  Rhine,  runs  an  amusement  hall  that 
makes  a  handsome  profit  on  the  sale  of  wine.  It  owns  and  operates  the  slaughter-house 
and  a  big  public  market.  It  does  its  own  banking  and  loans  money  at  low  interest  rates 
to  citizens  to  build  homes  for  their  own  occupancy.  It  makes  and  sells  gas  and  electricity. 
It  owns  and  operates  all  the  street  railway  lines  in  the  city,  and  also  has  a  controlling 
share  in  the  stock  of  the  interurban  lines  of  the  district. — Boston  Globe. 

tThe  actual  figures  were  15,033,885.  See  "Our  Conflict  with  Socialism,"  American 
Liberty  and  Property  Association,  New  York. 

15 


It  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  conclude  that  the  entire  Socialist 
strength  of  the  country  was  represented  in  the  Socialist  vote  for  Mr.  Debs. 
The  Socialist  movement  of  the  United  States  comprises  those  persons  who 
think  Socialism  or  any  of  its  doctrines.  Any  one  who  favors  a  proposal  to 
take  powers  from  the  individual  and  place  them  in  the  hands  of  the  State, 
Js  a  Socialist,  and  is  contributing  of  his  strength  to  bring  into  existence  the 
Socialistic  State.  Our  seats  of  learning,  the  universities,  particularly  the 
chairs  of  political  economy  of  the  universities,  reek  with  Socialists  and 
Socialism.*  Many  of  the  occupants  of  these  chairs  frankly  admit  their 
adherence  to  this  polity ;  others,  however,  would  deny,  if  accused,  that  they 
are  Socialists,  though  few  would  not  admit  sympathy  with  Socialism.  When 
they  are  asked,  as  Dr.  Scott  Nearing,  professor  of  economics  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Pennsylvania,  was  asked  the  other  day  by  the  Chairman  of  the 
United  States  Commission  on  Industrial  Eelations,  "What,  in  your  mind, 
is  the  real  cause  of  the  industrial  unrest?"  there  is  given  a  Socialist  reply. 
Dr.  Nearing  answered : 

"The  fundamental  cause  is  our  lack  of  adjustment  in  our  property 
relations.  Now  if  we  were  all  in  a  community  and  all  have  work  and  no  one 
of  us  was  getting  more  than  50  cents  a  day,  there  would  be  no  particular 
unrest.  But  if  we  all  are  in  a  community  and  all  have  work  and  all  get 
50  cents  a  day  except  one  man  and  he  is  getting  $5.00,  the  rest  of  us  are 
going  to  wonder  why  and  ask  about  it.  The  most  important  thing — and  I 
start  my  economics  on  this  proposition — is  that  every  man  is  entitled  to 
what  he  earns  and  no  more  and  no  less.  The  corollary  following  upon  that 
fundamental  principle  is  that  no  man  is  entitled  to  anything  which  he  does 
not  earn.  I  define  earn,  as  rendering  a  service.  I  earn  that  for  which  I 
render  a  personal  service.  I  earn  if  I  do  anything  for  which  society  is 
willing  to  pay;  for  a  service  rendered  in  any  form  which  society  will  accept. 
If  society  wants  to  go  to  the  movies,  the  actor  earns  that  which  he  renders. 
If  I  am  a  poet  and  society  will  not  accept  my  poems,  I  do  not  earn  it.  That 
is  the  fundamental  principle  of  economics,  the  relation  between  earnings,  of 
what  the  man  gives,  what  he  gets  and  the  effort  that  he  expends.  All  other 
forms  of  income  for  which  one  does  not  render  personal  service,  namely, 
rent,  interest  and  profits,  are  inethical  and  anti-social." 

There  would  be  no  difficulty  in  anyone  declaring  that  these  doctrines 
square  with  Socialism  in  every  aspect.  The  Professor's  views  respecting 
service,  the  alleged  inequitableness  of  receiving  returns  for  use  of  property, 
his  ideas  about  "rent,  interest  and  profits" — the  special  antipathies  of  the 
Socialists,  the  abolition  of  which  is  utterly  necessary  to  their  scheme  of  the 
centralized  State — all  stamp  Dr.  Nearing  as  being  a  full  type  Socialist. 
And  when  he  is  asked  by  Chairman  Harris  Weinstock: 

"If  this  situation  goes  on  as  it  is  now  going,  what  forecast  would  you 
make  for  the  condition  of  the  worker  30  or  40  years  hence  ? '  '- 
to  that  question  he  has  no  better  answer  to  make  than : 

' '  You  mean,  if  he  stands  for  it  ? " 

Revolution,  chaos,  industrial  reign  of  terror,  culminating  in  a  reor- 


*Note  the  discussion  as  to  the  socialism  of  Prof.  Farnam  of  the  Chair  of  Political 
Economy  at  Yale  University  in  my  pamphlet  "Japan's  Message  to  America,  a  Reply," 
also  p.  28  herein. 

16 


ganized  government  "bought  at  the  price  of  peace"  in  which  the  man  has 
next  to  no  rights,  but  the  State  is  all,  this  is  the  fate  which  in  the  minds 
of  these  savants  overhangs  the  country.  So  feeling,  so  believing,  they  can 
look  with  complacency  on  the  scenes  that  transpired  in  Colorado  last  month, 
and  which  have  been  going  on  almost  continuously  over  the  country  for 
years,  in  which  the  issue  between  the  coal  mine  owners  and  the  union  was 
the  closed  shop,  with  the  grim  consciousness  that  these  things  are  inevitable ; 
that  there  is  no  way  to  prevent  them;  that  their  political  economy  supplies 
no  remedy,  since  they  mark  the  processes  by  which  the  normal  evolution  of 
industry,  as  civilization  rises,  proceeds  to  draw  the  nation  into  a  different 
organization  from  what  it  now  is,  being  one  in  which,  by  some  means  they 
think  may  be  possible,  but  which  they  do  not  understand,  the  worker  may 
be  given  a  much  larger  share  of  the  product  than  he  now  receives.*  There- 
fore, our  economic  professors  would  advise  the  property  owners  and 
operators  and  those  laborers  who  refuse  to  work  under  the  yoke  of  the 
union  (in  the  Colorado  instance  comprising  ninety  per  cent  of  the  total 
number)  that  they  should  yield  to  the  demand  of  ten  per  cent  of  the 
unionists,  and  accept  the  administration  which  they  seek  to  impose.  It  is 
not  surprising,  therefore,  that  we  find  the  head  of  the  Department  of  Polit- 
ical Economy  in  Columbia  University,  Professor  Edwin  R.  A.  Seligman,f 
opposing  those  who  own  and  operate  the  mines,  the  free  workmen  and  the 
regularly  constituted  authorities  of  the  State  of  Colorado,x  and  advocating 
acquiescence  in  the  demands  of  the  union.  Professor  Seligman,  we  are 
told, ft  "insists  that  Mr.  Rockefeller  misunderstands  the  issue.  Recognition 
of  the  union  means  merely  the  right  of  'collective  bargaining'  on  part  of 
the  miners  as  well  as  mine  owners — recognition, J  that  is,  of  the  right  of  the 
men  to  treat  with  their  employers  through  their  chosen  officials.  'Why,'  he 
asks,  'should  the  Colorado  operators  find  it  impossible  to  achieve  what  has 
actually  been  accomplished  by  their  colleagues  in  nearly  every  other  State 
in  the  Union  ?  And  why  should  so  much  emphasis  be  put  on  the  sacredness 
of  a  'principle'  which  has  been  abandoned  almost  everywhere  else  in  the 
ooal  fields  of  England  and  of  the  United  States,  and  the  disappearance  of 
which  is  leading  toward  industrial  peace  and  social  progress  ? ' ' 

It  is  interesting  information  that  the  principle  of  free  contract  for 
services  has  been  "abandoned  almost  everywhere  else  in  the  coal  fields  of 


*See  the  address  of  Prof.  J.  H.  Gray,  head  of  the  Economics  Department  of  the 
University  of  Minnesota,  and  President  of  the  Economic  Association  of  the  United  States, 
delivered  before  the  Commonwealth  Club  of  San  Francisco,  July  25th,  1914,  in  which  he 
said:  "There  can  be  no  freedom  of  contract  between  persons  of  high  inequality."  He 
predicted  that  "labor"  would  not  be  satisfied  until  it  had  a  share  in  the  direction  of 
industry,  and  some  financial  stake  in  industrial  undertakings  over  and  above  that  of  a 
stated  wage.  See  San  Francisco  newspaper  reports  of  July  26th,  1914. 

tNote  page  29  herein. 


xSee   an   interesting  and   manifestly   truthful   article   upon   this   difficulty   by   Elias   M. 
Ammons,  Governor  of  Colorado,  in  North  American  Review,  July,  1914. 


ttCurrent  Opinion,  June,  1914,  p.  414. 


JThere  is  some  question  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  demand  of  the  Union,  an  attempt 
being  made  to  create  a  distinction  between  "recognition"  and  the  closed  shop.  "Recogni- 
tion," however,  would  concede  the  right  of  the  union  to  assert  the  conditions  under  which 
the  union  men  would  work,  and  it  is  the  principle  of  the  union  that  its  men  do  not  work 
with  non-union  men.  Hence  "recognition"  of  the  union  would  inevitably  culminate  in 
demand  that  the  non-unionists  be  supplanted  by  union  workmen,  whether. such  demand 
were  specifically  embodied  in  the  demand  for  "recognition"  or  not. 

17 


the  United  States  and  England,"  but  it  is  more  interesting  when  we  are 
told  that  this  sort  of  thing  is  "leading  toward  industrial  peace  and  social 
progress. ' '  The  vast  nation-wide  coal  miners  and  traffic  strikes  of  England 
which  brought  business  in  that  country  to  a  standstill  during  the  past 
eighteen  months,  caused  suffering  untold  to  the  poor,  and  vast  losses  to  the 
well-to-do  and  to  the  nation,  are  too  recent  to  call  for  any  recital  here ;  but 
it  is  important  that  we  may  get  some  notion  of  what  the  doctrine  that 
Prof.  Seligman  advocates  may  be  shaping  for  the  future  in  England,  in 
order  that  we  may  comprehend  the  kind  of  "industrial  peace  and  social 
progress"  which  the  Professor  tells  us  it  is  "leading  toward."  We  find  a 
quite  stimulating  forecast  of  it  in  an  article  dated  London,  December  20th, 
1913,  and  printed  in  the  issue  of  the  following  day  of  the  San  Francisco 
Chronicle.  It  reads: 

The  Standard  says  that  the  biggest  trade  unions  in  the  country  are 
concentrating  their  forces  for  a  great  fight  with  capital.  The  movement  is 
regarded  as  the  reply  to  the  employers'  $250,000,000  fund  and  is  declared 
by  H.  Gosling  to  be  the  inevitable  answer  thereto.  Railway  men  have  a 
programme  for  an  eight-hour  day  and  a  minimum  wage,  the  dockers  are 
formulating  a  set  of  demands,  and  the  miners  are  preparing  new  proposals. 
The  district  agreements  of  the  miners  expire  in  1915,  and  that  year  is 
regarded  as  the  time  of  the  threatened  labor  Armageddon.  Meanwhile  the 
great  forces  on  both  sides  are  being  steadily  marshalled. 

This  new  and  ominous  move  is  inaugurated  by  the  decision  of  the 
Miners'  Federation  to  approach  the  other  big  trade  unions  "with  the  view 
to  co-operate  action  in  support  of  each  other's  demands."  "The  latest 
development,"  said  a  member  of  the  United  Kingdom  Employers'  Defense 
Union,  "brings  the  labor  movement  to  the  borderland  of  syndicalism. 
Indeed,  one  of  the  speakers  at  the  Scarborough  conference  of  the  Miners ' 
Federation  said  he  would  stand  for  'syndicalism,  anarchism,  even  nihilism' 
in  connection  with  the  Dublin  lockout.  The  proposed  amalgamation  for  the 
purposes  of  a  national  strike  in  1915  must  be  closely  watched  by  employers 
if  their  interests  and  industries  are  to  be  preserved.  The  Employers' 
Defense  Union  will  have  formulated  their  plans  in  a  few  days  for  guarding 
against  the  unjustifiable  attacks  on  the  various  industrial  concerns  through- 
out the  country. 

' '  It  has  been  justly  appreciated  that  the  new  combination  of  labor  will 
eventually  represent  over  5,000,000  trade  unionists.  The  Miners'  Federa- 
tion itself  is  the  most  powerful  branch  at  present,  with  a  total  of  about 
750,000  members.  Railway  men  total  more  than  600,000  and  the  latest 
reports  are  that  non-unionists  join  the  union  at  the  rate  of  3000  per  week. 
The  day  of  unorganized  employers  is  past.  Organization  of  the  leaders  of 
industry  throughout  the  kingdom — mines,  railways,  shipping,  engineering, 
cotton,  etc. — are  at  last  taking  place. 

"There  has  been  the  best  proof  already  given  that  eventually  the  sum 
of  $250,000,000  will  be  subscribed  as  a  working  fund  by  the  guarantors. 
It  is  a  matter  of  life  or  death  to  manufacturers  competing  with  foreign 
countries.  In  many  cases  higher  wages  cannot  be  given  if  the  businesses 
are  to  be  run  on  a  profitable  basis,  or  even  run  at  all.  Run  at  a  loss,  they 
do  not  run  long,  and  when  the  works  are  closed  the  ranks  of  the  unemployed 
are  increased,  and  it  is  hopeless  for  trade  unions  to  contribute  out-of-work 
wages  long. 

18 


"No  action  will  be  taken  by  the  Defense  Union  on  behalf  of  an 
employer  unless  the  executive  is  satisfied  that  he  is  treating  his  men  fairly 
and  paying  them  the  ordinary  rate  of  wages.  Employes  would  go  direct  to 
the  employers  when  they  considered  they  had  grievances.  There  would 
thus  be  eliminated  the  baneful  results  of  the  work  of  paid  agitators  who 
organize  strikes  for  their  own  pockets.  All  this  is,  of  course,  against  the 
Socialist  and  syndicalist  agitator,  who  makes  it  his  business  to  create 
industrial  discord. 

"The  justification  of  the  employers  in  forming  the  Defense  Union  is 
that  they  are  bound  to  unite  to  protect  themselves  against  the  ever- 
recurring  menaces  of  syndicalism,*  in  connection  with  which  the  announce- 
ment of  the  miners'  decision  is  the  latest  development.  There  is  no  use  in 
denying  any  longer  that  there  is  a  strong  syndicalist  movement  in  this 
country  which  must  be  checked  at  all  costs.  Revelations  in  connection  with 
the  coal,  the  traffic  and  other  big  strikes,  the  inciting  of  soldiers  to  mutiny, 
and  other  phases  of  advanced  syndicalism  can  no  longer  be  disregarded. 

' '  Syndicalism  is  anarchy  pure  and  simple — the  holding  up  of  the  whole 
community  for  what  can  be  got  out  of  it.  As  Sir  Arthur  Clay,  one  of  the 
promoters  of  the  present  employers'  movement,  aptly  puts  it,  'syndicalism 
means  the  total  destruction  of  the  existing  industrial  organizations  and  the 
transfer  of  all  means  of  production  from  their  present  possessors,  the  wage 
payers,  to  the  wage  receivers.'  Imbued  with  this  revolutionary  purpose, 
the  power  of  the  5,000,000  trade  union  workers  would  be  absolutely  invinc- 
ible were  no  deterrent  force  brought  to  bear  against  it. ' ' 

Frank  Hodges  of  South  Wales,  who  proposed  co-operation  of  trade 
unions  at  the  Miners'  Federation  in  Scarborough,  said  it  would  largely 
modify  the  future  action  of  trade  unionism  and  prepare  the  machinery  for 
dealing  with  capitalist  organization  on  a  more  complete  and  scientific  scale. 
Railway  men  had  their  plans  for  a  30  shillings  minimum  and  eight  hours 
day ;  the  dockers  were  formulating  their  programme,  and  in  1915  the  miners' 
district  minimum  agreements  terminated.  He  suggested  unified  and  simul- 
taneous action — one  national  strike  instead  of  three,  if  demands  could  not 
be  won  without  it.  If  the  transport  workers  had  formed  part  of  such 
organization  they  would  have  been  able  to  deal  with  the  Dublin  trouble  in 
a  more  effective  way  than  by  sending  $5000  a  week.  Only  scientific  organi- 
zation would  beat  the  employers  with  their  own  weapons. 

There  is  no  nation  in  which  labor  unionism  is  in  proportion  to  popu- 
lation more  highly  developed  than  it  is  in  England,  in  which  it  wields  more 
political  power,  where  its  doctrines  are  in  more  widespread  practice  or 
where  the  effects  of  its  operations  are  more  abundantly  and  distinctly 
manifest.  Its  Labor  Party  in  1910  polled  506,000  votes,  with  the  radical 
groups  polling  123,000  more,  making  a  total  of  629,000  labor  votes,  and 
holding  forty  seats  in  Parliament. t  And  from  a  survey  of  the  industrial 
field  of  England  it  is  apparent  that  in  the  development  of  labor  unionism, 


"The  syndicalist  movement  owes  its  origin  to  the  entrance  into  and  domination  of  the 
French  unions,  or  syndicate,  by  the  anarchists.  Syndicalism  and  anarchism  both  aim  to 
re-establish  society  through  social  revolution  and  the  general  strike,  on  the  basis  of  free 
groups  of  workmen  controlling  the  production  of  the  world.  Both  aim  to  destroy  patriot- 
ism in  favor  of  international  solidarity  of  workers— to  substitute  the  spirit  of  class  for 
the  spirit  of  nationality.  Through  the  fomentation  of  multiplied  strikes,  the  increasing 
of  the  number  and  size  of  strikes,  and  the  sympathetic  strike,  is  created  the  idea  of  the 
social  general  strike,  which  will  obtain  for  the  working  people  all  their  demands  without 
the  aid  of  political  leaders.  The  American  Year  Book,  1912,  p.  398. 

tThe  recent  elections  in  France  are  reported  to  have  returned  101  Socialist  deputies, 
representing  10,100,000  constituents. 

19 


Socialism,  labor  unionism  and  anarchism  coalesce,  and  take  the  form  of 
Syndicalism.  This  result  is  most  natural.  The  tendency  of  laborism  is  to 
unify,  solidify,  to  enmass  and  become  mobile;  and  in  this  shape  it  will 
enforce  its  demands  with  the  universal  strike.  As  various  unions  have  at 
the  same  time  demands  against  their  employers,  hence  causes  for  strikes, 
what  is  more  natural  than  that  they  should  link  together  their  demands  and 
unite  their  strikes  into  one  general  endeavor.  Socialism  has  divided  society 
into  two  classes,  the  labor  class  and  the  capitalist  class,  between  which,  by 
the  nature  of  their  relative  occupations,  it  asserts  there  is  irreconcilable 
conflict.  The  employment  of  the  former  by  the  latter  is  denned  as  * '  exploita- 
tion" of  the  laborer  by  the  capitalist.  The  war  upon  the  capitalist  is  for 
his  extermination  and  nothing  short  of  this  will  meet  the  Socialist  program. 
As  all  of  these  terms  and  tenets  have  been  adopted  by  the  labor  unions  in 
Europe,  there  is  a  merging  of  all  into  a  common  Soicalistic  mass,  which 
coincides  with  that  of  an  army,  and  the  simultaneous  strike  is  analogous  to 
a  general  charge  on  the  field  of  battle.  It  is  plain  to  see  our  destiny  in  the 
United  States  with  our  industrial  movement  proceeding  upon  these  false 
doctrines.  The  real  and  ultimate  power  in  laborism  is  the  latest  which  has 
appeared,  the  Independent  Workers  of  the  World,  the  American  name  for 
the  Syndicalists. 

Syndicalism  first  appeared  in  the  United  States  in  the  "mass"  organi- 
zation of  the  Knights  of  Labor,  and  expressed  itself  in  action  in  the  Amer- 
ican Railway  Union,  headed  by  Eugene  V.  Debs.  This  concern  brought 
about  the  Pullman  strike  at  Chicago  in  1894.  The  Western  Federation  of 
Miners  has  been  the  most  explicit  exponent  of  its  shade  of  the  Socialist 
doctrine,  as  expressed  in  its  various  mining  strikes,  commencing  in  the 
Colorado  strike  in  1904,  also  that  of  recent  date  and  others;  likewise  the 
Idaho  strike  in  which  Orchard  killed  Governor  Steunenberg  of  that  State. 
These  strikes  have  always  been  attended  with  destructive  violence,  such  as 
the  dynamiting  of  mills  as  well  as  armed  warfare,  and  as  such  they  have 
differentiated  from  other  strikes  of  the  Industrial  Workers,  notably  the 
lumber  and  traffic  strikes  in  the  Northwest,  in  which  the  policy  was  strictly 
non-combative.* 

The  laborites  are  at  present  divided  into  two  wings,  those  who  favor 
trade  autonomy  as  represented  by  the  labor  unions,  and  those  who  stand 
for  industrial  union,  the  motive  of  the  I.  W.  W. 's.  At  the  head  of  the 
Industrial  Union  group  are  William  D.  Haywood  and  John  Mitchell ;  the 
leader  of  the  trade  autonomy  group  is  Sampel  Gompers.  At  the  1912 
meeting  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  of  which  Mr.  Gompers  is 
president,  a  representative  vote  of  5,929  stood  in  favor  of  adoption  of 
Industrial  Unionism  by  the  Federation,  with  10,983  against.  The  same 
principle  manifested  itself  in  the  Socialist  convention  of  that  year  and 
polled  one-third  of  the  strength  of  that  body,  the  influence  of  the  doctrine 


*See    "Revolution    Yawns,"    article    by   Agnes    C.    Laut,    Technical    World    Magazine, 
October,  1912. 

20 


in  the  two  conventions  being  about  the  same  proportion  to  the  total  con- 
stituency. That  the  plan  of  Industrial  Union  will  attain  the  uppermost 
hand,  there  is  no  doubt.  The  gap  between  33  1/3  per  cent  and  51  per  cent 
is  not  large,  and  it  will  speedily  close,  with  the  syndicalists  in  ascendance. 
The  doctrinal  differences  between  the  several  groups  is  negligible.  The 
influence  which  holds  the  elements  apart  is  the  conservatism  of  those  who 
are  content  with  the  present  status  of  their  union  affairs,  believing  that 
their  unions  can  get  for  them  whatever  they  want;  these  are  chiefly  con- 
tained within  the  orders  of  the  steam  railway  unions.  Aside  from  this  the 
influence  which  keeps  the  several  components  of  the  labor  world  apart  is 
mere  jealousy  of  leaderships.  Even  in  the  case  of  the  railway  unions,  the 
prevailing  condition  will  not  long  obtain.  The  pressure  of  ever  rising  cost 
of  living  behind  the  unions  will  continue  to  force  periodic  demands  for 
higher  wages,  and  will  either  drive  the  railroads  out  of  the  hands  of  their 
owners  and  into  those  of  the  government,  thereby  accomplishing  thus  much 
of  the  Socialistic  State  program,  or  there  will  be  strikes  which  will  consoli- 
date the  other  divisions  of  the  industrial  army,  and  we  shall  have  in  the 
United  States  the  same  expression  of  the  mass  strike  which  is  moving  in 
England. 

It  is  a  notion  of  the  Socialist  agitator  that  not  only  will  the  country 
be  converted  into  a  Socialist  State  but  that  he  will  be  landed  high  in  the 
councils  of  the  made  over  nation.  In  this  he  is  mistaken.  There  are  few 
men  in  the  Socialist  movement  who  would  go  far  toward  the  zenith  in  that 
firmament  of  politics  in  which  they  had  to  vie  with  all  and  sundry  of  the 
most  excellent  of  the  country.  The  great  geniuses  in  American  life  of  this 
day  are  not  in  politics.  They  are  in  invention  and  finance — those  fields  in 
which,  until  very  recently,  the  largest  rewards  requited  their  efforts.  When 
the  State  was  the  most  remunerative  factor  they  were  found  in  office;  in 
the  days  when  religion  was  the  dominating  influence,  they  were  in  the 
Church,  and  Eichelieu,  Mazarin  and  the  rest  presented  instances  of  the 
most  potential  minds  of  the  day,  working  in  the  region  of  greatest  power. 
Under  Socialism,  however,  there  would  be  present  in  the  State  the  condition 
which  would  draw  to  its  exercise  the  highest  talent  that  exists.  Private 
business  being  no  longer  profitable,  they  will  turn  to  that  locality  where 
profit  and  power  abides,  and  they  will  enter  upon  the  functions  of  the 
State.  This  is  coming  now  to  be  the  case  in  those  countries  of  Europe 
where  Socialism  is  strong.  In  Germany  men  of  large  finance  and  business 
have  taken  hold  of  it  and  become  its  leaders,  eclipsing  and  extinguishing 
those  minor  entities  who  having  borne  the  heat  of  the  day  expect  rewards 
with  success,  only  to  find  to  their  chagrin  themselves  supplanted  by 
talented  and  distinguished  strangers,  who,  having  done  nothing  to  help 
build  up  the  movement,  take  the  exercise  of  the  power  from  the  hands  of 
its  progenitors  and  long  time  servitors.  In  Belgium  Ernest  Solvey,  a 
wealthy  manufacturer,  has  recently  given  a  million  dollars  to  the  Socialist 
cause,  and  the  plaudits  with  which  his  donation  was  greeted  by  the  Socialist 

21 


press  at  once  exonerated  him  from  all  odium  which  otherwise  besmirched 
him  as  a  member  of  the  hated  capitalist  class. 

The  same  phenomenon  is  noted  in  the  United  States.  Hitherto  the 
minor,  or  so-called  mushroom  parties,  like  the  Greenback  or  the  Farmers' 
Alliance  parties,  after  a  period  of  rise  and  more  or  less  nourishing  growth, 
have  subsided  and  disappeared  through  the  absorption  by  one  or  both  of 
the  larger  parties  of  the  leading  and  practicable  planks  of  their  platforms. 
When  this  has  not  been  the  case,  as  in  the  Prohibition  party,  such  party 
has  persisted.  It  was  to  be  expected,  therefore,  that  notwithstanding  the 
adoption  by  both  the  Eepublican  and  Democratic  party  platforms  of  various 
of  the  demands  of  the  Socialist  party,  as  limiting  the  labor  of  women, 
workmen's  compensation  and  others,  there  would  arise  yet  another  party 
which  would  go  even  farther  in  the  direction  of  Socialism  than  either  the 
Democratic  or  Eepublican  party,  and  would  seek  to  place  itself  in  the  way 
of  overcoming  the  Socialist  party.  This  has  occurred  in  the  rise  of  the  Pro- 
gressive party. 

It  may  be  observed  that  while  the  Democratic  and  Republican  party 
both  incorporated  in  their  platforms  certain  planks  of  the  Socialist  struc- 
ture, such  accretions  were  merely  additions  to  the  respective  edifices ;  they 
did  not  disturb  the  foundations  of  either  party.  After  these  specific  adop- 
tions, both  the  party  of  Jefferson  and  that  of  Lincoln  remained  parties  of 
the  Constitution.  But  with  the  installation  of  the  Progressive  party  there 
came  ino  existence  a  new  organization,  planned  like  the  Socialist  party,  to 
overcome  and  eliminate  the  Constitution  and  substitute  another  rule,  the 
only  other  rule  possible,  viz.,  the  more  or  less  uncurbed  will  of  the 
sovereign.* 

The  distinctive  character  of  the  Progressive  party  was  admirably  eluci- 
dated by  Mr.  Winston  Churchill  in  a  speech  delivered  in  San  Francisco  on 
April  12th,  1913,  at  a  banquet  at  which  were  present  practically  all  the  large 
figures  of  the  Progressive  movement  in  California,  the  twin  State  with 
New  York  in  its  installation.  Brief  speeches  were  made  by  the  party 
leaders,  but  the  address  of  the  evening  was  by  Mr.  Churchill,  whose  name 
was  coupled  with  that  of  Governor  Johnson  as  the  latter 's  running  mate  in 
a  future  Progressive  race  for  the  Presidency.  This  speech  of  Mr.  Churchill 
is  extremely  important,  as  it  shows  explicitly  the  nature  of  the  Progressive 
sodality,  from  which  wre  are  able  definitely  to  catalogue  it  as  a  Socialist, 
and  not  a  Constitutionalist  party.  And  in  this  behalf  it  is  apropos  that  we 
regard  the  demands  of  the  Socialist  party  as  presented  in  its  most  recent 
national  platform.  Aside  from  collective  ownership,  and  "democratic 
management,"  of  all  means  of  transportation,  storage,  and  distributing 


*The  form  of  a  deliberative  body  is  usually  preserved  in  a  democracy  when  absolutism 
supervenes,  whether  such  absolutism  be  crowned  or  uncrowned.  The  Roman  senate  and 
assembly  were  both  preserved  under  the  absolutisms  of  both  Julius  and  Augustus  Caesar. 
"His  obedient  senate"  was  a  figment,  but  nevertheless  a  component  of  the  despotism  of 
Napoleon.  The  Congress  of  Diaz  in  Mexico  and  the  legislatures  of  Governor  Johnson  in 
California,  are  instances  of  democratic  forms  lingering  in  the  presence  of  imperialistic 
absorption  and  domination  of  the  law-making  power,  a  pehnomenon  now  widely  manifest 
in  the  United  States,  in  which  the  case  of  California  is  by  no  means  isolated. 

99 


agencies,  of  all  mineral  deposits  and  forests;  the  "collective  ownership  of 
land  where  practicable,  where  impracticable  the  appropriation  and  collec- 
tion of  all  rentals  held  for  speculation  or  exploitation,"  etc.,  it  embodies 
the  initiative,  referendum  and  recall;  abolition  of  the  Senate  and  of  the 
veto  power  of  the  President;  abolition  of  "the  power  usurped  from  the 
people  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  to  pass  upon  the  consti- 
tutionality of  legislation  enacted  by  Congress";  national  laws  to  be  repealed 
only  by  act  of  Congress  or  referendum  of  the  people,  an  amending  process 
of  Congressional  laws  by  a  majority  of  voters  in  a  majority  of  the  States ; 
an  immediate  reduction  of  the  power  of  the  Courts ;  the  abolition  of  all 
Federal  District  and  Circuit  Courts;  the  election  of  all  Judges  for  short 
terms;  a  convention  for  revision  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

The  government  is  to  be  radically  changed.  The  Senate  must  be  abol- 
ished. We  are  to  go  back  to  the  unicameral  system  of  the  Republics  of  the 
Italian  middle  ages.  This  single  chamber  is  not  to  be  held  in  check  by 
either  the  President  with  the  veto,  or  the  Supreme  Court  with  the  constitu- 
tion. What  this  chamber  does  can  only  be  reviewed  by  "the  people,"*  by 
referendum  or  "a  majority  of  the  voters  in  a  majority  of  the  States." 
The  constitution  in  such  case  is  a  floating  kidney;  it  may  be  anywhere,  or 
not  at  all;  in  either  case  it  is  practically  nugatory,  and  the  "revision"  of 
it,  for  which  the  Socialists'  program  calls,  is  really  to  get  it  out  of  the  way. 
Such  a  convention,  however,  would  not  be  really  necessary  in  order  to 
destroy  the  constitution.  It  would  be  effectively  wiped  out  by  eliminating 
the  power  of  the  Supreme  Court  to  determine  the  constitutionality  of  acts 
of  Congress.  If  there  be  no  authority  vested  anywhere  to  determine  whether 
the  laws  infringe  the  constitution,  then  the  constitution  is  effectually  dead. 
It  is  no  longer  a  paramount  instrument,  for  none  may  say  it  is  paramount, 
and  it  is  no  longer  any  restraint  upon  the  law  making  power.  The  latter 
becomes  hence  supreme,  and  Congress  may  proceed  to  make  laws  in  contra- 
vention of  it  without  regard  for  its  existence.  The  idea  of  a  government 
of  limited  powers  at  once  disappears,  for  the  powers  of  Congress  are 
unlimited,  and  it  may  legislate  against  the  life,  the  liberties  or  the  property 
of  the  citizen,  against  the  existence  of  the  States  or  any  of  that  scope  of 
powers  vouchsafed  to  them,  and  there  is  none  to  say  it  nay.  For  if  it  shall 
be  asserted  that  there  exists  the  referendum  to  the  people  which  shall 
supply  the  place  of  the  discarded  checks,  let  me  answer  that  in  a  few  years, 
whatever  fragment  or  resemblance  of  such  procedure  would  remain  after 
having  experienced  the  abuses,  deceptions  and  subversions  to  which  it 
would  be  immediately  subjected,  would  be  repealed  and  abolished  by  this 
same  Congress,  and  who  would  stop  its  doing  so  ? 

Bearing  the  foregoing  in  mind,  we  have  before  this  aggregate  of 
California  Progressivism  the  distinguished  speaker  of  the  evening,  Mr. 
Churchill,  who  upon  being  introduced  by  Governor  Johnson,  and  deferring 

*See  page  50  herein. 

23 


with  fitting  genuflections  to  the  altar  of  the  Chicago  platform  which  he 
avowed  was  the  "second  Declaration  of  Independence,"  said: 

' '  Of  what  was  the  declaration  of  1776  an  expression  ?  We  immediately 
answer,  of  the  rights  of  man,  and  this  is  the  kind  of  vague  answer  with 
which  we  have  hitherto  been  content.  That  declaration,  and  a  little  later 
the  French  revolution,  marked  the  culmination  of  the  long  struggle  of  the 
common  people  of  the  oppressive  governments  of  gone-by  centuries  against 
the  irresponsible  tyranny  of  nobilities.  But  what  is  of  vital  importance 
for  us  to  realize  is  that  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  the  embodi- 
ment of  what  at  that  time  was  a  new  philosophy  in  government,  and  of  one 
which  was  hated  and  feared  by  the  ruling  classes.  It  was  the  philosophy 
worked  out  by  Rousseau  and  the  'social  agitators'  of  that  day,  and  which 
was  so  ardently  taken  up  by  our  patriots,  such  as  Benjamin  Franklin  and 
Thomas  Jefferson.  It  was  called  the  theory  of  the  natural  rights  of  man. 

"Now,  since  this  philosophy  was  the  salvation  of  a  liberty-loving  people 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  since  it  has,  curiously  enough,  become  the 
stumbling  block  of  a  liberty-loving  people  in  the  twentieth  century,  it  is 
of  vital  moment  for  us  to  understand  it;  and  particularly  because  it  is  at 
the  root  of  our  common  law  and  of  the  constitutional  system  under  which 
we  are  still  living. 

"Its  idea  is,  briefly,  that  the  welfare  of  the  State  is  secondary  to  that 
of  the  individual  citizen.  And  it  was  evolved  in  this  way:  Under  aristo- 
cratic governments,  the  common  man  had  no  legal  rights  whatever  that 
the  ruling  classes  would  recognize,  and  when  the  struggle  for  these  rights 
began  it  was  necessary  for  the  philosophers  to  rest  them  on  some  ground 
which  the  aristocrats  could  not  deny.  So  they  rested  them  in  nature  itself. 
They  declared  that  the  very  act  of  being  born  into  the  world  gave  every 
man  certain  inalienable  rights  which  no  aristocratic  government  could  take 
away — such  as  life,  liberty,  the  right  to  hold  property  and  to  make  con- 
tracts, and  another  r,ight  which  was  somewhat  guardedly  designated  as 
'the  pursuit  of  happiness.'  These  were  the  rights  which,  by  reason  of  his 
birthright,  a  man  could  not  cede  to  his  government. 

"The  trouble  with  that  philosophy,  we  perceive  now,  lay  in  a  miscon- 
ception of  the  State,  and  was  natural  enough  in  a  period  when  modern 
science  was  still  in  its  infancy.  The  individual,  because  he  believed  that 
he  was  born  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  society,  as  it  were,  kindly  consented 
on  certain  well-defined  terms  to  become  a  part  of  society.  The  individual 
is  therefore  the  primary  unit,  the  State  the  secondary.  The  State  is  a 
necessary  evil,  and  there  should  be  as  little  government  as  possible.  It  was 
as  much  as  to  say  that  a  man  might  live,  if  he  wishes,  entirely  outside  of 
society.  And  he  clung  to  his  'inalienable  rights,'  no  matter  how  much  this 
clinging  might  interfere  with  the  welfare  of  society  in  general.  That 
society  should  gradually  reach  a  condition  in  which  these  'rights'  of  the 
individual  would  tend  to  make  life  unbearable  for  the  majority,  was,  of 
course,  in  that  day  not  foreseen.  This  alone  could  reveal  the  flaws  in  such 
a  philosophy. 

"It  was  not  until  the  nineteenth  century  that  Darwin  came  forward 
with  the  scientific  theory  of  evolution — one  which  has  had  the  profoundest 
effects  upon  philosophy.  Not  only  the  prevailing  philosophy  of  today  but 
the  common  sense  of  our  age  is  beginning  to  see  that  society  itself  has 
grown  by  a  process  of  evolution,  and  that  the  individual  develops  through 
society.  That  whatever  we  are,  whatever  value  we  have  in  the  world,  that 
value  is  actually  created  by  society.  And  after  all  can  we  help  living 
together,  even  if  we  desire  not  to  do  so  ?  We  are  at  length  discovering  for 

24 


ourselves  the  great  Christian  truth,  which  the  naturalistic  philosophy  of 
the  eighteenth  century  denied,  that  we  grow,  paradoxically,  through  service 
to  our  fellow  men. 

"Thus,  according  to  our  present-day  enlightenment,  society  and  not 
man  is  the  primary  unit.  And  our  constructive  political  efforts  today  are 
all  on  that  principle.  And  what  happens  when  we  try  to  make  laws  which 
will  tend  to  incorporate  that  principle  into  government?  We  come  up 
against  our  constitution,  against  our  common  law  itself,  as  against  stone 
walls,  for  the  simple  reason  that  that  constitution  and  that  common  law 
are  the  hardened  expressions  of  a  philosophy  which  has  served  its  usefulness 
in  the  world,  and  has  now  become  an  obstruction.  For  a  century  lawyers 
of  this  school  have  ruled  the  United  States,  and  these  have  absorbed  this 
philosophy  as  a  child  absorbs  its  mother's  milk." 

Here  we  have  the  doctrine  in  a  nutshell ;  the  principle  of  individual 
liberty  is  all  wrong.  The  State  is  not  subservient  to  the  citizen,  it  is  his 
master.  It  is  not  an  instrument  which  he  has  formed  to  use  the  collective 
force  of  his  fellows  in  the  preservation  of  his  rights,  for  he  has  no  rights, 
he  has  only  privileges ;  his  rights  are  foregone  into  the  body  of  society,  and 
he  will  do  what  the  State  permits  him  to  do,  and  that  only.  Hence,  a 
written  constitution  is  completely  out  of  the  question,  and  it  must  be 
swept  aside.  No  instrument  that  purports  to  define  human  rights  has  any 
place  in  a  statesmanship  which  denies  the  existence  of  any  human  rights 
at  all,  which  holds  that  man  is  not  a  citizen  but  a  subject.  So  long  as  such 
constitution  exists  it  is  "a  stone  wall"  against  the  application  of  such 
philosophy,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  its  principles  are  being  eaten 
into,  and  its  masonry  carted  off  by  judges  and  legislators  who,  infused 
with  the  doctrines  of  Mr.  Churchill,  have,  as  opportunity  offered,  been 
devoting  their  energies  to  shoveling  it  away.  Mr.  Churchill  continues : 

"The  fact  that  the  courts  have  not  always  been  consistent  in  their 
decisions,  that  the  bias  of  individual  judges  or  the  force  of  public  sentiment 
has  resulted  in  opinions  at  variance  with  the  eighteenth  century  spirit  of 
the  Constitution,  are  evidences  of  that  conflict  which  is  raging  in  the  soul  of 
our  civilization.  And  the  further  fact  that  there  has  been  evinced  on  the 
part  of  our  courts  a  tendency  to  use  the  power  of  the  State  to  protect  minors 
and  women  from  exploitation  does  not  help  matters  greatly  so  long  as  the 
old  philosophy  remains  entrenched.  A  nation,  like  a  man,  may  be  at  war 
with  itself,  and  that  is  precisely  our  condition  today. 

' '  What  phenomenon  has  occurred  in  the  world  to  convert  the  philosophy 
of  the  natural  rights  of  man  from  a  blessing  to  a  menace  and  even  a  curse  to 
society?  The  question  may  best  be  answered,  I  think,  by  a  figure.  Our 
ancestors  built  up  a  fortress  of  liberty,  and  faced  its  walls  in  a  certain 
direction — in  the  direction  in  short  of  those  hostile  forces  which  threatened 
it  at  that  time,  the  serried  ranks  of  a  political  aristocrary  of  privilege.  Mark 
the  word  political.  For  the  danger  was  from  those,  mind  you,  who  used  the 
power  of  government  to  oppress.  And  behold,  scarcely  have  the  walls  been 
standing  a  hundred  years,  and  the  power  against  which  they  were  erected 
has  faded  into  a  phantom.  We  hear  occasionally  from  patriotic  capitalists 
the  cry  of  "Dictator!"  but  no  sensible  person  is  really  alarmed  on  that 
score.  Little  by  little  government  and  politics  have  grown  more  and  more 
democratic,  until  we  were  lulled  into  a  fancied  security ;  we  flattered  our- 
selves that  all  the  enemies  of  liberty  were  dead.  And  all  the  while  stealthily 

25 


and  wholly  unperceived,  another  and  new  army  has  been  gathering  against 
liberty — and  in  a  direction  from  which  we  never  dreamed  any  danger  would 
arise.  Behind  the  very  bulwarks  which  our  ancestors  built  up.  And,  as  it 
has  gained  force,  this  new  army  has  pressed  in  on  us,  and  pressed  in  until 
the  very  bulwarks  have  become  the  walls  of  our  prison,  hemming  us  in  on 
the  only  side  where  now  liberty  is  possible, 

' '  This  new  army  is  the  army  of  industrial  and  economic  privilege.  And 
the  question  is  today  what  bulwark  shall  we  have  to  erect  against  them  ? 
Nay,  we  shall  have  first  to  tear  the  old  one  down,  for  they  are  actually 
using  this  against  us  to  their  own  advantage.  That  which  was  a  bulwark  of 
liberty  has  suddenly  and  amazingly  become  the  very  fortress  of  privilege 
itself,  and  of  a  new  kind  of  privilege ! 

' '  Of  what  philosophy  shall  we  make  the  bricks  of  our  new  ramparts  ? 

"At  the  time  when  our  constitution  was_  written,  we  see,  the  political 
order  was  an  aristocratic  one,  and  the  economic  order  the  humble  and 
democratic  one.  And  it  was  a  thing  never  dreamed  of  in  the  philosophy  of 
that  day  that  modest  shopkeepers  and  manufacturers  would  ever  rise  to 
form  an  arrogant  and  menacing  class.  What  had  liberty  to  fear  from 
them?  All  they  asked  of  the  political  aristocrats  was  to  be  'let  alone'  to 
pursue  their  livelihood  in  peace.  To  be  let  alone.  That  cry  ironically 
enough,  has  become  the  watchword  of  the  modern  industrial  oligarchy 
today.  The  eighteenth  century  was  indeed  the  day  of  democracy  in  trade, 
of  an  easy  transition  from  employe  to  employer,  of  opportunities  relatively 
equal  and  of  a  widely  distributed  wealth.  But  today,  how  different.  The 
small  producer  is  being  ruthlessly  crushed  by  the  sheer  economic  power  of 
the  trusts,  society  is  settling  into  economic  layers,  the  opportunity  to  the 
poor  man  is  growing  less  and  less,  and  enormous  wealth  is  concentrated 
into  a  few  hands. 

"Is  it  any  wonder  then  that  we  hear  today  these  gentlemen  of  the 
corporations  and  their  lawyers  appealing  to  the  "sacredness  of  the  con- 
stitution'? Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  legal  lights  in  the  Republican  party 
stick  to  the  outworn  philosophy  in  the  common  law?  Let  me  quote  from 
Professor  Overstreet :  l  Today  for  the  first  time  the  common  law  finds 
itself  arrayed  against  the  people  ...  It  exhibits  too  great  a  respect 
for  the  individual  and  for  the  intrenched  position  in  which  our  legal  and 
political  history  has  put  him,  and  too  little  respect  for  the  needs  of  society 
when  they  come  in  conflict  with  the  individual,  to  be  in  touch  with  the 
present  age.' 

"I  need,  in  such  an  audience  as  this,  only  to  refer  to  the  numerous 
cases  we  all  know  about  of  laws  for  the  social  welfare,  health  and  safety 
demanded  by  the  people,  passed  at  length  by  reluctant  Legislatures  against 
the  will  of  corporations,  and  reversed  cheerfully  by  members  of  the  bench 
because  they  are  in  opposition  to  the  dead  philosophy  in  our  common  law 
and  constitution.  Our  age  presents  no  greater  mockery  than  this.  A 
law  may  be  passed,  for  example  restricting  the  hours  of  labor  for  women 
who  are  to  become  mothers  of  the  race.  It  is  nullified  by  a  court  on  the 
ground  that  it  is  interfering  with  the  right  of  private  contract,  and  that 
a  woman's  labor  is  her  property  to  do  as  she  chooses  with,  even  if  she  be 
killed  in  the  performance.  To  whose  benefit  does  such  a  decision  as  that 
redound?  To  the  benefit  of  the  woman?  Or  to  the  benefit  of  the  manu- 
facturer who  turns  on  the  economic  pressure?  The  highest  court  in  New 
York  reverses,  because  it  is  taking  away  property  without  due  process  of 
law,  an  employer's  liability  and  workman's  compensation  act  which  is 
clearly  in  the  interests  of  humanity.  And  the  same  thing  happens  to  a 

'26 


law  prohibiting  the  manufacture  of  cigars  in  the  home,  although  the  home 
may  be  reeking  with  filthy  diseases. 

"So  long  as  that  philosophy  is  in  our  Constitution  and  common  law, 
we  must  expect  such  decisions.  It  is  the  State,  we  see  now,  and  the  State 
against  which  the  constitutional  suspicions  are  still  directed,  which  is  the 
friend  of  the  oppressed." 

"L'etat,  C'est  Moi!"  said  the  French  king,  slapping  his  chest  with 
a  hearty  blow,  as  we  may  well  imagine— The  State ?  I  AM  THE  STATE! 
and  here  is  the  fosse  into  which  the  whole  battalion  of  these  doughty 
Quixotes  with  their  poised  lances  of  ancient  philosophy*  is  plunged  and 
submerged,  in  their  assault  upon  the  "wall"  of  the  Constitution  of  which 
Mr.  Churchill  complains — they  do  not  discriminate  between  the  State  and 
the  Rulers  of  the  State! 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  use  of  power  over  the  wills  of  others  to 
differentiate  those  who  administer  the  power  from  those  who  are  subject 
to  it.  Only  in  relations  that  are  reciprocal  and  interdependent,  does  the 
exercise  of  authority  coordinate  with  feelings  of  fraternity  and  mutual 
desire  for  benefit.  There  is  no  station  or  province  in  life  that  so  quickly 
segregates  men  into  classes  as  the  authority  of  political  rule.  China  is  not 
the  only  State  in  which  the  ruling  class,  now  as  of  old,  were  and  are  so 
far  lifted  from  the  body  of  the  people,  that  they  even  speak  another 
tongue — the  mandarin  dialect.  The  person  of  the  governmental  head 
becomes  sacred.  He  takes  his  powers  not  from  the  people,  but  from  God, 
to  Whom  only  he  is  accountable,  and  he  traces  his  ancestry  into  the  lares 
and  penates  of  divinity.  Few  are  admitted  to  behold  him,  and  these 
ordinarily  may  not  look  upon  his  face,  but  must  prostrate  themselves  at 
his  feet.  His  name  must  be  treated  with  reverence;  men  may  violate  the 
fourth  commandment,  and  scoff  at  Heaven,  but  if  they  speak  lightly  of 
the  Czar  they  are  jailed  for  lese-majeste.  It  is  true  that  in  this  modern 
period  not  all  absolute  governments  hedge  their  kings  with  such  seclusion. 
In  this  day  of  ferment  amongst  the  masses,  the  ruling  entity  is  no  longer 
swathed  in  mystery,  but  he  is  haloed  with  the  spectacular.  The  names 
which  used  to  be  spoken  in  whispers  with  bared  and  bowed  heads,  now 
flaunt  in  the  newspapers  under  pictures  of  His  Majesty  laced  with  tinsel 
and  capped  in  fur,  seated  in  an  open  barouche  in  line  of  a  great  procession. 
The  imagination  of  the  multitude  is  reached  and  affected  in  the  opposite 
way  to  what  it  once  was,  and,  as  said  Napoleon,  "imagination  rules  the 
world!" 

There  is  no  more  profound  wisdom  expressed  anywhere  in  the  scheme 
of  the  Commonwealth,  than  that  of  its  provisions  aimed  at  preventing  the 
individuals  who  are  called  upon  to  rule,  concreting  into  a  class.  The 


*The  republics  of  Greece  and  Rome  had  no  conception  of  individual  liberty.  All  polit- 
ical ideas  necessarily  concern  man  as  a  social  animal,  as  a  member  of  society — a  member 
of  the  State.  The  ancient  republics  put  the  State  first  and  regarded  the  individual  only 
as  a  member  of  the  State.  They  had  in  view  the  public  rights  of  the  State  in  which  all 
its  members  shared,  and  the  rights  of  the  members  as  parts  of  the  whole;  but  they  did 
not  think  of  individuals  as  having  rights  independent  of  the  State,  or  against  the  State. 
Elihu  Root:  Experiments  in  Government  and  Essentials  of  the  Constitution,  N.  A. 
Review,  August,  1913. 

27 


tendency  to  crystallize  is  constantly  broken  by  expiration  of  the  terms  of 
elective  office.  The  rulers  are  drawn  from  the  body  of  the  people,  invested 
with  powers,  and  they  are  at  definite,  predetermined  periods  returned 
to  the  body  of  the  people,  stripped  of  their  powers,  and  made  to  feel  that 
they  are  again  of  the  sea  of  the  commonality.  Only  by  written  consti- 
tutions can  this  be  effected ;  and  when  we  strike  down  government  founded 
on  a  written  document,  and  wipe  out  written  law,  be  it  code  or  common, 
we  have  no  longer  government  by  law,  but  we  have  government  by  men, 
and  if  there  be  any  lesson  in  the  school  of  history  which  we  are  taught, 
if  we  be  longer  open  to  its  teaching,  it  is  that  governments  are  oppressive 
and  outrageous  toward  their  peoples,  just  in  degree  as  they  are  ruled  by 
men  and  not  by  law. 

Mr.  Churchill  acknowledges  his  indebtedness  for  the  views  he  espouses 
to  Professor  Harry  Overstreet,  erstwhile  of  the  Chair  of  Philosophy  in 
the  University  of  California.  Again  the  baleful  influence  of  the  College 
professor.  It  will,  I  think,  be  information  to  the  country  that  Socialism 
has  penetrated  the  heart  of  our  educational  system,  and  when  the  defender 
of  the  Constitution  looks  around  him  for  his  foes,  he  finds  the  most 
formidable  of  their  barricades  built  of  the  furniture  of  our  Universities. 
Professor  Patten*  tells  us  that: 

"It  would  be  nearer  right  to  say  that  in  1912  all  thinkers  are  Socialistic. 
Either  as  a  matter  of  principle,  or  by  some  type  of  dualism,  they  admit 
it  as  an  element  in  their  thought  or  as  a  mode  of  expressing  their  feelings. 
The  important  book  in  bringing  about  this  change  is  Professor  Seligman's 
'Economic  Interpretation  of  History.'  Without. exaggeration  it  can  be  said 
that  this  is  the  bible  of  American  Socialism.  Instead  of  going  to  the 
writings  of  Marx,  Socialists  refer  to  it  as  an  authority  of  fundamental 
topics.  This  of  itself  would  be  a  matter  of  importance,  but  its  real  influ- 
ence lies  in  the  fact  that  it  enabled  a  large  group  of  American  thinkers  to 
accept  Socialism,  and  to  express  their  ideas  in  its  terms,  "t 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Professor  Patten  is  correct,  and  in  proof 
thereof  we  may  turn  almost  anywhere  amongst  the  latest  books  that  are 
appearing  upon  politics  and  sociology,  written  by  men  who  hold  reputa- 
tions for  learning,  wisdom  and  ability.  Take,  for  instance  the  recent  book 
by  Brooks  Adams  a  noted  lawyer  and  publicist  of  the  east,  and  remark 
his  disparagement  and  apparent  despair  of  the  Constitution: 

' '  In  the  United  States  we  have  carried  bills  of  right  and  Constitutional 
limitations  to  an  extreme,  and  yet  I  suppose  that  few  care  to  maintain  that 
during  the  nineteenth  century  life  and  property  were  safer  in  America  or 
crime  better  dealt  with  than  in  England,  France  or  Germany.  The  con- 
trary, indeed,  I  take  to  be  the  truth,  and  I  think  one  chief  cause  of  this 
imperfection  in  the  administration  of  justice  will  be  found  to  have  been 
the  operation  of  the  written  Constitution.  .  .  .  Although  our  written 
Constitution  was  successful  in  its  primary  purpose  of  facilitating  the  con- 


"Simon  N.  Patten,  Professor  of  Political  Economy,  University  of  Pennsylvania. 


f'The    Reconstruction    of    Economic    Theory,"    American    Academy    of    Political    and 
Social  Science,  1912. 

28 


solidation  of  the  Confederation,  it  has  not  otherwise  inspired  confidence 
as  a  practical  administrative  device."! 

Notwithstanding  the  influence  of  Prof.  Overstreet  however,  there  was 
nothing  uttered  by  Mr.  Churchill  in  the  approving  presence  of  Governor 
Johnson,  that  was  at  all  at  variance  with  the  definition  of  the  doctrines  of 
the  Progressive  Party,  as  expounded  by  Col.  Roosevelt  throughout  the 
country  in  the  Roosevelt  and  Johnson  presidential  campaign.  In  the 
Colonel's  mouthpiece  and  party  organ,  of  which  he  himself  at  the  time 
was  an  editor,  The  Outlook*  we  find  the  same  expressions  declaring  in 
favor  of  the  Socialistic  State  as  against  the  Commonwealth.  The  Outlook's 
article  is  entitled  "The  New  Freedom,"  and  seeks  to  distinguish  between 
the  brand  of  freedom  dispensed  by  the  Progressives,  and  the  quality  of  the 
same  declared  by  President  Wilson,  which  was  Constitutional  government 
proceeding  in  its  proper  sphere  in  dealing  with  new  questions  which  have 
arisen  in  the  course  of  the  industrial  development  of  the  nation.  This 
however,  the  Outlook  regards  as  the  "old  freedom,"  and  the  "new"  is 
that  Socialist  variety  which  we  have  been  discussing.  The  Outlook  says: 
The  Old  Freedom  is  individual,  the  New  Freedom  is  social.  The  Old 
Freedom  demands  a  government  of  narrowly  limited  powers,  the  New 
Freedom  desires  a  government  of  expanding  powers.  The  Old  Freedom 
believes  that  the  individual  can  care  for  his  own  interests ;  the  New  Freedom 
believes  that  individuals  can  combine  in  caring  for  their  common  interests. 
The  Old  Freedom  is  afraid  of  power — steam  boilers  sometimes  explode; 
the  New  Freedom  welcomes  power  for  it  believes  that  steam  engines 
can  be  so  regulated  that  they  will  not  explode.  The  Old  Freedom 
says  every  man  for  himself  and  sometimes  adds,  under  breath,  the  rest 
of  the  proverb ;  the  New  Freedom  says :  Let  each  man  care  for  all,  and 
society  care  for  the  hindmost.  The  Old  Freedom  is  afraid  of  great  indus- 
trial organizations,  and  wishes  to  dissolve  them ;  the  New  Freedom  believes 
in  great  industrial  organizations,  whether  of  labor  or  capital,  and  wishes 
to  control,  direct  and  employ  them. 

I  do  not  think  that  Mr.  Churchill's  pronunciamentcs  could  have  had  a 
more  suiting  summing  up  than  is  found  in  these  utterances  of  Col. 
Roosevelt  or  his  associate.  They  check  off  explicitly  with  corresponding 
declarations  of  Mr.  Debs  or  Mr.  Haywood.  In  fact  it  is  well  recognized  in 
the  Socialist  world  that  all  the  proposals  for  which  the  "Roosevelt  Pro- 
gressives" stand,  are  Socialistic,  and  are  known  to  Socialists  as  "reforms."' 
These  so  called  "reforms"  are  enumerated  in  the  Outlook's  "New 
Freedom"  article  as,  among  others, 

\T~he  Theory  of  Social  Evolution,  by  Brooks  Adams. 

Note  also  the  following  from  the  San  Francisco  Chronicle  Sept.  4,  1914  :  "No  such 
thing1  as  the  natural  inalienable  rights  of  man  exists,"  declared  Professor  Ira  B.  Cross  of 
the  department  of  economics  of  the  University  of  California  yesterday  before  the  United 
States  Commission  on  Industrial  Relations.  "The  only  rights  are  the  rights  of  society. 
Industrial  unrest  and  warfare  between  employer  and  labor  will  continue  until  the  employ- 
ing class  is  made  to  see  that  the  right  it  claims  of  conducting  its  business  in  its  own  way 
must  go  down  before  the  rights  of  society."  Dr.  Cross  assigned  as  the  greatest  present 
cause  of  industrial  unrest  the  feeling  of  the  workingman  that  he  cannot  get  justice  in  the 
courts.  He  asserted  that  the  unions  have  done  only  the  things  that  have  been  forced  upon 
them  by  the  employers.  Another  cause  mentioned  by  Dr.  Cross  is  the  general  rise  in 
prices.  He  proposed  as  a  solution  of  this  difficulty  Government  ownership  of  all  gold 
mines  and  a  standardized  dollar. 


"July  llth,  1914,  p.  584. 

29 


"The  short  ballot;  the  direct  primary;  the  initiative,  referendum  and 
recall;  preventing  child  labor,  limiting  woman's  labor;  preventing  over- 
time and  under  pay  for  all  labor;  and  putting  the  perils  of  moderr 
industry  upon  the  community." 

The  latter  of  these  namely  "preventing  overtime,"  may  be  interpreted  as 
the  eight  hour  law  with  which  we  have  entitled  this  essay;  the  "under 
pay"  is  the  minimum  wage,  and  "putting  the  perils  of  modern  industry 
upon  the  community,"  is  workmen's  insurance  or  compensation.  To  these 
Mr.  Churchill  adds  limitation  of  production  in  his  statement :  * '  unregulated 
production  causes  distress  by  periods  of  stagnation  and  oversupply." 
This  limitation  of  production  is  one  of  the  familiar  "regulations"  of  labor 
unionism,  which  fixes  the  number  of  brick  a  man  may  lay,  the  number  of 
cigars  a  journeyman  may  make,  the  number  of  bottles  a  blower  may  blow, 
the  number  of  barrels  of  lime  a  plasterer  may  mix,  etc.,  as  a  day's  work, 
a  system  and  a  principle  that  runs  throughout  unionism,  the  scale  fixed 
on  the  basis  of  the  moderate  performance  of  the  most  inefficient  man;  it 
being  assumed  that  if  this  output  were  exceeded,  not  only  would  there  be 
manifest  a  dissatisfying  disparity  in  the  performances  of  the  laborers, 
tending  to  a  weeding  out,  or  reducing  the  wages  of  the  less  efficient,  but  by 
reason  of  the  excess  production  in  the  market,  there  would  be  thus  much 
less  to  be  done  by  idle  laborers,  who  otherwise  might  be  employed.* 

To  the  exercise  of  the  recall  upon  officials  the  Roosevelt  Socialism  adds 
the  recall  of  judicial  decisions.  This  also  is  a  method  of  getting  the 
constitution  out  of  the  way.  Senator  Root  points  out  this  would  not  be 
as  it  is  commonly  supposed  it  would,  a  popular  reversal  of  the  decisions 
of  the  Court,  it  would  not  be  judicial,  it  would  be  legislation  by  the 
populace.  The  Senator  states: 

"The  action  would  not  be  a  decision  that  the  court  was  wrong  in 
finding  a  law  unconstitutional,  but  it  would  make  a  law  valid  which  was 
invalid  before  because  unconstitutional.  In  such  an  election  the  majority 
of  voters  would  make  a  law  where  no  law  had  existed  before,  and  they 
would  make  that  law  in  violation  of  the  rules  of  conduct  by  which  tUe 
people  themselves  had  solemnly  declared  they  ought  to  be  bound.  If  it 

*Certain  labor  unionists,  notably  John  Mitchell,  are  opposed  to  limiting  of  production 
by  the  unionists.  The  reasoning  Mr.  Mitchell  employs  in  defense  of  his  position  is  correct. 
See  "The  Case  Against  the  Labor  Union,"  by  Dr.  Washington  Gladden,  Outlook,  March,  1911. 
But  the  labor  world  has  never  followed  in  practice  the  views  of  Mr.  Mitchell,  notwith- 
standing they  stoutly  deny  that  the  union  does  limit  output,  a  fact  that  is  within  the 
knowledge  of  anyone  employing  unionists  in  work  susceptible  of  measurement.  See  "The 
Battle  Line  of  Labor,"  by  Sampel  P.  Orth,  World's  Work,  January,  1913.  "Foundries  and 
machine  shops  were  specific  in  their  complaints  on  this  line.  In  one  Eastern  shop  I  was 
told  that  in  their  foundry  they  were  making  large  cast-iron  pulley  wheels.  The  men  were 
making  two  a  day.  A  test  was  made  and  it  wa^  found  that  four  could  easily  be  made. 
But  the  man  who  made  the  test  came  to  his  foreman  after  a  few  days  and  said  he  would 
have  to  quit  working  so  fast.  The  union  had  fined  him  $50.  Some  unions  have  defined  a 
day's  work.  The  lathers  at  Chicago  at  one  time  called  twenty-five  bundles  the  limit  of  a 
day's  toil,  and  the  Chicago  carpenters  resolved  that  'any  member  guilty  of  excessive  work 
or  rushing  on  any  job  shall  be  reported  and  be  subject  to  a  fine  of  $5.'  The  bricklayers 
of  Boston  forbade  practices  that  would  'jeopardize  the  interests  of  a  fellow  member,'  like 
'putting  the  lime  on  more  than  one  course  at  a  time.'  Plumbers  must  not  ride  bicycles  to 
or  from  work." 

The  concept  upon  which  limiting  output  rests,  and  which  therefore  accounts  for  the 
universality  of  the  practice  amongst  the  unions,  is  that  the  more  work  that  is  done,  the 
less  remains  to  be  done.  That  the  market  must  not  be  overproduced,  but  that  scarcity  of 
product  and  scarcity  of  laborers  must  be  maintained.  Both  of  these  postulates  are  exactly 
opposite  to  truth.  Opportunity  to  labor  rests  upon  abundance  of  product  and  plentitude  of 
laborers,  as  I  have  shown  in  my  prior  pamphlets.  Mr.  Churchill  in  his  proposals  to 
"regulate  production,"  meaning  limitation  of  production,  is  uttering  one  of  the  basic  and 
most  fatal  fallacies  of  labor  unionism. 

30 


can  be  exercised  at  all  it  can  be  exercised  by  a  majority  whenever  they 
wish  to  exercise  it.  If  it  can  be  employed  to  make  a  Workmen's  Compen- 
sation Act  in  such  terms  as  to  violate  the  Constitution,  it  can  be  employed 
to  prohibit  the  worship  of  an  unpopular  religious  sect,  or  to  take  away 
the  property  of  an  unpopular  rich  man  without  compensation,  or  to 
prohibit  freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press  in  opposition  to  prevailing 
popular  opinion,  or  to  deprive  one  accused  of  crime  of  fair  trial  when  he 
has  already  been  condemned  by  the  newspapers.  The  exercise  of  such  a 
power  would  strike  at  the  very  foundation  of  our  system  of  government." 
And  I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  if  extinguishment  of  the  consti- 
tution is  close  at  hand  it  will  disappear  by  the  routes  which  Mr.  Roosevelt 
shall  have  adopted  and  suggested.  The  Eecall  of  Judges  and  the  Recall 
of  Judicial  decisions  will  do  it.  Men  may  hesitate  in  deliberately  assem- 
bling a  convention  to  obliterate  the  constitution,  but  if  it  can  be  by  piece 
meal  gotten  out  of  the  way,  by  repealing  by  popular  vote  upon  a  popular 
question  this  or  that  of  its  provisions  through  reversing  decisions  or 
recalling  judges,  that  is  the  avenue  through  which  it  will  readily  disappear. 

The  Socialist  does  not  care  that  these  numerous  "reforms"  are 
adopted  by  various  legislatures.  He  regards  their  adoption  as  '  *  clarifying 
class  lines,"  and  drawing  nearer  to  the  goal  of  the  Socialistic  State.  In 
this  he  is  undoubtedly  correct.  Spargo  and  Arner  say: 

"No  new  order  can  spring  full  grown  from  sudden  revolution.  The 
transition  is  already  in  progress.  Every  move  in  the  direction  of  the 
Socialization  of  the  State,  while  not  itself  necessarily  Socialistic,  is  a  part  of 
the  adjustment  of  transition.  Long  before  any  nation  consciously  and 
voluntarily  adopts  the  Socialist  ideal,  it  will  have  already  tried  many 
of  its  features.  Social  evolution  has  always  been  a  constantly  accelerating 
process,  and  it  seems  probable  that  the  social  revolution  now  in  progress 
will  reach  its  culmination,  Socialism,  in  a  shorter  length  of  time  than  any 
of  the  great  social  changes  of  the  past." 

The  Socialist  like  the  Progressive,  "believes  in  great  industrial  organ- 
izations;" the  Progressive  thinks  he  can  regulate  such  through  the  State; 
the  Socialist  sees  in  them  the  shaping  up  of  industry  preparatory  to  its 
being  taken  over  and  operated  by  the  State.  The  Constitutionalist,  (the 
individualist)  however,  the  Outlook  says,  is  "afraid  of  great  industrial 
organizations."  The  Outlook  is  in  part  mistaken;  the  Constitutionalist  is 
not  afraid  of  such  organizations  because  they  are  great,  but  he  is  afraid 
of  the  monopoly  upon  which  they  are  so  often  based,  by  virtue  of  which 
they  so  often  exist,  and  which  neither  the  Progressive  or  the  Socialist  care 
a  rap  about,  but  rather  regard  as  a  quality  common  and  necessary  to 
industry,  which  in  one  instance  must  be  "regulated"  by  government 
while  remaining  nominally  in  individualistic  hands,  and  in  the  other  must 
be  taken  entirely  out  of  individualistic  hands  and  conducted  altogether 
by  government. 

The  Industrial  Unionist,  however,  declares  "a  plague  on  both  your 
houses."  He  is  against  all  "reforms."  His  method  is  mass  strikes.  He 
would  attain  the  Socialist  State  as  a  development  out  of  the  Socialist 
movement.  When  the  Progressive,  having  taken  from  the  Socialist  prac- 

31 


tically  all  of  his  several  and  many  panaceas  or  "reforms"  has,  in  coopera- 
tion with  the  Socialist  brought  the  country  to  a  pro-Socialist  mind,  the 
multitude  seeing  no  avenue  of  escape  from  intolerable  conditions  save  the 
great  industrial  monopoly  which  the  Socialist  designs  as  the  State — at 
that  time  the  Industrial  Unionist  will  come  forward  with  his  mass  strike, 
his  final  Waterloo  charge,  which  will  rout  the  constitution  and  clear  the 
whole  field  of  individualistic  citizenship ;  whereupon  the  socialized  state 
will  arise,  organized  and  doing  business,  at  a  stroke.* 

Seeing  now  the  cleavage  in  the  politico-industrial  realm  of  the  country 
to  exist  with  the  Socialists,  Progressives,  Labor  Unionists  and  Industrial 
Unionists  on  one  hand,  and  the  Constitutionalists  on  the  other,  the  latter 
comprising  the  Republican  and  Democratic  parties,  except  in  so  far  as 
the  platforms  of  these  parties  give  adherence  to  divers  of  the  Socialist 
"reforms/'  it  becomes  needful  to  examine  these  several  "reforms."  to 
consider  their  nature  and  operation.  Broadly  they  all  draw  the  State 
from  its  function  of  governing  into  the  region  of  procuring  to  the  citizen 
that  which,  under  free  conditions  he  could  readily  attain  to  himself,  and 
are  therefor  based  upon  the  hypothesis  that  individual  freedom  is  incom- 
patible with  civilization.  For  as  civilization  rests  upon  applied  science, 
and  expands  and  rises  just  as  such  science  becomes  more  developed  and 
refined,  so  are  the  great  units  of  industry  expressions  of  the  civilization 
which  the  sciences  create.  To  find  it  necessary  therefor,  that  the  State 
should  come  forth,  with  its  laws  and  force  in  order  that  under  such  civiliza- 
tion a  man  might  get  a  living  while  defended  from  being  crushed  or 
starved  in  the  process,  is  to  condemn  civilization  in  its  free  action  as  a 
harm  to  man.  It  has  indeed  so  seemed  to  many  who  bear  great  reputations 
as  thinkers  in  various  avenues  of  thought.  Only  a  few  years  ago  Professor 
Huxley  wrote: 

"Even  the  best  of  modern  civilization  appears  to  me  to   exhibit  a 
condition  of  mankind  which  neither  embodies  any  worthy  ideal  nor  even 

*The  chief  doctrinaire  of  the  industrial  union  in  the  United  States  was  Daniel  De  Leon, 
an  erstwhile  lecturer  on  international  law  in  Columbia  University,  who  recently  died. 
De  Leon  set  forth  the  principles  and  purposes  of  the  Industrial  Union  (I.  W.  W.)  move- 
ment as  follows : 

1.  Industrial   Unionism,    organized   in   harmony  with   the   mechanism   of   concentrated 
capitalist  production,  is  the  condition  sine  qua  non  of  the  revolutionary  movement.     Mere 
industrial  unionism,  however,  is  insufficient ;   it  must  be  revolutionary  industrial  unionism. 

2.  By  means  of  the  industrial  organization,  the  workers  can  secure  all  the  immediate 
betterements  they  require — immediate  reforms  which,  gained  by  means  of  the  power  of  the 
workers  through  mass  strikes,  constitute  steps  toward  the  final  goal,  develop  the  integrity 
and  self-reliance  of  the  proletariat,  and  prepare  it  for  its  historic  mission. 

3  The  movement  should  not  deal  in  political  reform.  Reforms  of  this  character 
benefit  the  Middle  Class  and  the  Aristocracy  of  Labor  almost  exclusively,  and  will  be 
yielded  by  the  ruling  class  itself — a  theory  now  being  proven  by  capitalist  Progressivism. 
Political  reform  is  a  menace  to  the  integrity  of  the  revolutionary  movement. 

4.  The    Socialist   political   movement   is   purely   agitational  ;    its   mission    is   not    "con- 
structive politics,"  but  to  lash  onward  the  bourgeois  parties  by  an  aggressive  policy,  warm 
into  life  the  revolutionary  spirit  of  the  workers,   and  courageously  develop  the  necessary 
sentiment  for  revolutionary  Industrial  Unionism.     Only  upon  this  basis  is  political  action 
justifiable. 

5.  The  goal  of  the  revolutionary  movement  is  the  overthrow  of  political  government, 
which  means  the  overthrow  of  all  class  rule — the  substitution  of  industrial   representation 
for  territorial  representation,  industrial  administration  for  political  government.     Industrial 
Unionism  not  only  organizes  for  the  immediate,  every-day  struggles  of  the  proletariat,  but 
prepares    the    structure    of    the    future    society,    organizes    the    Socialist    State    within    the 
Capitalist  State,  ready  to  assume  control  of  society  ;  in  other  words,  the  revolutionary  act 
will  be  performed  by  the  industrially  organized  proletariat ;   and  Industrial  Unionism  will 
not  only  be  the  most  powerful  force  in  overthrowing  Capitalist  society  but  will  constitute 
the  basis  of  the  Socialist  society  of  the  future.     The  New  Review,  July,  1914. 

32 


possesses  the  merit  of  stability.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  express  the  opinion 
that  if  there  is  no  hope  of  a  larger  improvement  of  the  condition  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  human  family;  if  it  is  true  that  the  increase  of  knowl- 
edge, the  winning  of  a  greater  domain  over  nature  which  is  its  consequence, 
and  the  wealth  which  follows  upon  that  domain  are  to  make  no  difference 
in  the  extent  and  the  intensity  of  want  with  its  concomitant  moral  and 
physical  degredation  among  the  masses  of  the  people,  I  should  hail  the 
advent  of  some  kindly  comet  which  would  sweep  the  whole  affair  away, 
as  a  desirable  consummation."* 

The  Socialist  group  to  which  I  have  referred,  therefor,  would  avert  such 
calamity,  preliminarily  to  the  assumption  by  the  State  of  all  powers  and 
properties,  by  the  schedule  which  the  Outlook  and  Mr.  Churchill  set  forth, 
and  which  we  will  consider: 

And  in  this  behalf  it  should  be  remarked  that  there  are  certain  of 
these  demands  with  which  the  Constitutionalist  has  no  quarrel,  for  they 
rest  upon  individualistic  principles.  Take  for  instance  the  planks  against 
child  labor.  It  is  assumed  there  should  be  legislation  preventing  a  child 
from  entering  gainful  industry  prior  to  its  sixteenth  year.  Whatever  the 
year  may  be,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  principle  which  underlies  this 
order  of  restrictive  legislation  is  correct.  The  reason  is  that  prior  to  some 
age  in  the  region  of  adolescence,  the  child  cannot  be  said  to  be  moved  into 
industry  through  his  own  will,  but  is  so  placed  by  his  parents.  These 
latter  owe  a  duty  to  the  child  of  his  care,  sustenance  and  education. 
Every  one  is  entitled  to  a  period  of  childhood,  a  season  of  play,  of  growth, 
•of  fitting  oneself  through  schooling,  until  he  is  matured  and  equipped  to 
turn  to  the  walks  of  industry,  and  there  perform  his  tasks  under  condi- 
tions as  far  normal  as  his  unimpaired  natural  capacities  will  allow.  By 
permitting  the  immature  to  be  turned  to  earning  a  livelihood,  the  parent 
•evades  his  responsibilities  to  the  injury  of  the  child,  and  against  what 
must  be  assumed  as  the  child's  will.  At  this  juncture  the  State  steps 
forth  with  its  function  of  securing  each  in  possession  and  exercise  of  his 
rights,  of  holding  an  equal  hand  between  man  and  man,  and  turns  the 
child  from  the  factory  back  into  the  home.  A  normally  minded  parent 
surrounded  by  normal  industrial  conditions,  would  refuse  to  deprive  his 
offspring  of  the  pleasures  of  childhood,  and  scorn  the  paltry  sums  which 
its  little  hands  would  wring  from  industry.  The  State  under  the 
Constitution,  predicated  upon  the  operation  of  the  normal,  asserts  on 
behalf  of  the  child  that  which,  against  the  normal  parent,  would  require 
no  assertion.  It  is  the  State  preventing  a  wrong,  which  is  always  an 
indivisible  function  of  sovereignty.  And  if  it  should  occur  that  the 
parent  could  not  support  the  child,  or  it  be  turned  adrift  upon  the  high- 
ways, the  State  as  the  ultimate  factor  in  all  affairs  of  its  citizens  for  their 
protection  and  safety,  is  duty  bound  to  come  forward  to  its  succor;  and 
it  has  never  refused  to  assume  such  obligation.  Only,  however,  in  such 
extreme  cases  is  the  State  justified  in  thus  asserting  itself  actively  into  the 


"""Government ;  Anarchy  or  Regimentative,"  Nineteenth  Century,  May,  1890. 

33 


domestic  matters  of  the  citizen;  when  he  is  lielpless  through  infancy,  or 
through  illness  and  requires  relief  and  care,  and  there  be  no  willing  hand 
held  forth  to  aid  him,  the  State  is  in  loco  parentis,  the  ultimate  parent  and 
friend,  just  as  it  is  the  ultimate  legatee  of  his  estate  if  there  be  no  person 
otherwise  entitled,  or  the  owner  of  property  which  has  no  lawful  claimant. 
These  are  all  proper  and  necessary  functions  of  the  State,  but  they  are 
widely  different  from  those  aspects  of  State  interference  and  responsibility 
in  the  affairs  of  the  people,  in  which  the  Socialist  seeks  to  place  it. 

When  for  instance,  the  State  tells  a  woman  that  she  cannot  work  in 

industry  to  exceed  eight  hours  in  twenty-four,  here  we  have  in  the  highest 

degree  an  invasion  by  the  State  of  the  rights  of  the  citizen.    If  the  State 

may  prohibit  more  than  eight  hours  it  may  prohibit  more  than  four,  and 

if  it  has  power  to  designate  the  number  of  hours  one  may  work,  it  has 

powder  to  forbid  working   at  all;   or  if  it  permits  one  to  work,   it  may 

prescribe  the  condition  under  which  the  right  may  be  exercised.     It  can 

be  seen  that  here  at  a  swoop,  practically  the  entire  of  human  rights  is 

swept  out  of  the  hands  of  the  citizen  into  the  body  of  the  State;  for  if 

one  is  no  longer  free  to  work  as  he  will,  he  is  no  longer  free  at  all.    Thence 

forward  the  sovereign  is  not  a  protector  of  his  rights,  but  is  his  master, 

and  he  exists  not  by  right,  but  by  grace.     Nor  can  the  inhibition  of  the 

woman  working  beyond  a  prescribed  period  be  confused  with  that  order 

of  enactments  designed  to  protect  the  health,  or  to  secure  the  comfort  or 

safety  of  the  workers,  all  of  which  statutes,  where  genuinely  based  upon 

such  grounds,  are  proper  and  defensible,  in  that  the  government  stands 

to  protect  one  man  from  another.    A  man  has  a  right  to  health,  to  comfort 

and  to  safety,  and  if  he  works  for  another,  it  is  the  duty  of  that  other  to 

surround  him  with  conditions  which  conserve  such;  the  State  in  interfering 

merely  enforces  a  duty  of  one  toward  another;  in  other  words,  it  prevents 

a  wrong  being  done  one  through  the  failure  of  another  to  perform  his 

obligations.     This  is  the  true  office  of  the  State.     But  when  the  State 

prescribes  limitation  of  hours  during  which  one  may  work  for  another, 

there  is  present  none  of  these  principles.     There  is  nothing  either  unsafe, 

unhealthy,  or  uncomfortable  in  a  woman  working  more  than  eight  hours, 

and  if  there  were  there  is  no  duty  in  the  premises  which  could  possibly 

be   violated  or   neglected   in   either   an   employer   suffering   one   to   work 

longer  than  given  hours  or  in  the  employee  doing  so;  there  is  no  wrong 

present   calling  the   State   forward   to   intervene  between  the   parties,   to 

secure  one  in  a  right  which  the  other  is  traversing.     Eight  hours  may  be 

the  proper  time   for  some  women  to  work;   others  may  find   the  hours 

entirely  too  long,  and  may  wish  to  work  only  four  or  five;  while  other 

women  may  be  content  to  work  ten  or  even  twelve,  and  be  not  the  slightest 

the  worse  in  health,  and  much  the  better  in  pocket,  for  having  done  so. 

For  the  State,  ostensibly  "guarding  the  race,"  upon  the  assumption  that 

it  has  a  property  in  the  woman  from  her  standpoint  as  a  bearer  of  children, 

and  cannot  trust  her  to  care  for  her  own  person,  to  reach  forth  and  take 

34 


from  her  one  of  her  most  precious  rights,  that  of  control  of  her  own 
actions  in  the  realm  of  industry,  this  I  say  is  merely  a  specious  reassertion 
of  tyranny,  which  always  begins  its  destruction  of  the  liberties  of  the 
citizen  by  taking  away  rights  upon  more  or  less  plausible  .pretences  of 
public  welfare. 

This  order  of  legislation  is  very  old — the  prescribing  by  the  State  of 
the  conditions  under  which  one  may  work,  the  primary  condition  being 
the  purchase  of  the  right  itself  from  the  State  through  the  payment  of  a 
fee,  it  being  laid  down  that  the  citizen  possesses  no  such  right,  a  doctrine 
completely  conformable  to  the  position  of  Mr.  Churchill  and  his  fellow 
Progressives,  that  the  State  and  not  the  man  is  the  primary  unit,  that  man 
has  no  rights  save  those  which  are  granted  him  by  the  State.  Herbert 
Spencer,  in  an  article  printed  shortly  before  his  death,*  says: 

"Marvelous  are  the  conclusions  men  reach  when  once  they  desert  the 
simple  principle  that  each  man  should  be  allowed  to  pursue  the  objects 
of  life,  restrained  only  by  the  limits  which  the  similar  pursuits  of  their 
objects  by  others  impose.  A  generation  ago  we  heard  loud  assertion  of 
''the  right  to  labor' — that  is,  the  right  to  have  labor  provided;  and  there 
are  still  those  who  think  the  community  bound  to  find  work  for  each 
person.  Compare  this  with  the  doctrine  current  in  France  at  the  time 
when  the  monarchical  power  culminated — namely  that  'the  right  to  work 
is  a  royal  right,  which  the  Prince  can  sell  and  the  subjects  must  buy.' 
This  contrast  is  startling  enough;  but  a  contrast  still  more  startling  is 
being  provided  for  us.  We  now  see  a  resuscitation  of  the  despotic  doctrine. 
Differing  only  by  the  substitution  of  trades  unions  for  Kings.  For  now 
that  trades  unions  are  becoming  universal,  and  each  citizen  has  to  pay 
proscribed  moneys  to  one  or  another  of  them,  with  the  alternative  of 
being  a  non-unionist  to  whom  work  is  denied  by  force,  it  has  come  to  this, 
that  the  right  to  labor  is  a  trades  union  right,  which  the  trades  union 
can  sell,  and  the  individual  worker  must  buy." 

The  passage  from  the  State  denying  to  women  the  right  to  work  exceed- 
ing eight  hours,!  or  denying  to  men  and  others  employed  underground  or 
in  reduction  of  ores  the  right  to  work  more  than  eight  hours,!  to  a  law 
prohibiting  all  persons  from  working  in  excess  of  eight  hours,  which  is 
contained  in  the  bills  now  pending  before  the  electors  upon  initiative,  is 
a  transition  extremely  easy  to  be  made.  What  twenty  years  ago  would 
have  shocked  the  public  sense,  and  been  by  the  individual  citizen  considered 
outrageous  even  as  a  proposal,  now  finds  thousands  of  enthusiastic  adher- 
ents in  every  quarter  of  the  country.  So  widespread  has  been  the  inversion 
of  thought  upon  what  are  the  rights  of  the  citizen  and  where  the  State  in 
approaching  those  rights  must  stop,  that  we  find  a  multitude  of  advocates 
and  defenders  of  this  further  encroachment  by  the  sovereign,  making 
known  their  views  in  speech  and  press.  These  auxilleries  are  generally 
labor  unionists,  invaribaly  Socialists,  and  the  arguments  they  employ  in 
its  behalf  are  uniformly  Socialistic.  The  grounds  asserted  in  furtherance 

*"From  Freedom  to  Bondage,"  Popular  Science  Monthly,  April,  1891. 
t Statutes  of  California,  1911,  Ch.  258. 


^Statutes  of  California,  1909,  Ch.  181. 

35 


of  the  two  prior  statutes,  in  one  case  the  race  in  the  other  health*  are  not 
pretended  in  advancement  of  the  adoption  of  these  initiative  bills.  We 
are  told  however,  that  not  only  would  this  limitation  of  the  period  of  work 
beneficially  effect  those  laborers  whom  they  would  reach,  by  allowing  a 
greater  spell  of  leisure  than  they  now  enjoy,  thereby  tending  to  a  higher 
type  of  citizenship,  a  claim  that  may  be  dismissed  with  its  statement,  but 
that  a  large  number  would  work  for  from  one  to  four  hours  less  than  at 
present,  and  this  would  create  a  call  upon  the  services  of  many  idle  persons 
to  do  the  work  left  undone  by  those  who  now  perform  it;  and  such  idle 
ones,  it  is  said,  are  always  in  the  State  in  large  proportion  to  the  number 
actually  employed.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  belief  that  by  lessening  the 
number  of  hours  in  a  day's  work  the  volume  of  work  that  is  to  be  done 
may  be  made  to  "go  around"  amongst  a  greater  number  of  laborers, 
whereby  employment  may  be  given  to  many  otherwise  idle — that  this 
concept  is  the  real  influence  behind  all  calls  for  eight  hour  days.  Nor  is 
eight  hours  to  be  considered  the  lowest  limit  of  time  which  the  Socialist- 
labor  union  program  proposes.  In  a  recent  manifesto  of  the  San  Francisco 
labor  unions0  it  is  stated : 

"Labor's  practical  demands,  made  to  individual  employers,  are  for  higher 
wages,  shorter  hours  and  better  working  conditions.  Upon  these  three 
fundamental  demands  is  built  the  whole  philosophy  of  the  labor  movement. ' ' 
These  demands  are  increasing ;  they  are  never  gratified.  ' '  Samuel  Gompers 
told  me,"  says  Samuel  P.  Orthf 

"When  I  suggested  that  employers  complained  because  the  labor  unions 
were  constantly  asking  for  more,  were  never  satisfied:  'Labor  has  never 
received  its  full  rewards  for  the  vast  benefits  it  renders  to  society.'  Or 
in  other  words,  they  will  get  all  they  can.  From  this  premise  it  is  futile 
to  seek  a  solution  of  the  labor  problem '. ' ' J 

It  is  well  known  that  where  a  statutory  eight  hours  has  been  attained,  as 
in  the  antipodes,  that  the  labor  union  agitation  is  rampant  for  a  six  hour 
and  a  five  hour  day.  I  recently  heard  a  Socialist  orator  haranguing  a 
crowd  on  the  corner  of  Market  and  Stockton  Streets  in  San  Francisco, 
declare  that  two  or  two  and  a  half  hours  "was  the  destined  period  of  the 
Socialist  work-day;"  that  "the  great  Austrian  scientist —  — ,"  some  name 
he  mentioned,  had  figured  it  out  that  if  every  workable-aged  person  in  the 
world  worked  twenty-five  minutes  a  day,  with  the  use  of  modern  machinery 
and  methods,  there  would  be  ample  of  all  things  we  desire  to  supply 
everyone.  Indeed,  Spargo  and  Arner,  after  pointing  out  that  the  Socialists 
parties  of  Europe  demand  the  enactment  of  legislation  establishing  eight 
hours  as  the  maximum  work-day,  state  that  "American  Socialists  make 


*"A  proper  exercise  of  the  police  power  for  the  preservation  of  public  health."     Holden 
v.  Hardy,  169  U.  S.  366.     Re  Martin;  Supreme  Court  of  California,  Dec.  23,   1909. 

"Editorial    in    San    Francisco    Bulletin    special    edition    in    charge    of    labor    unions, 
Aug.   8,   1914. 


f'The  Battle  Line  of  Labor,"  The  World's  Work,  November,  1912. 


tGreat  Britain  had  1462  labor  disputes  in   1912,  being  more   than   double  the  average 
of  the  preceding  twenty  years. 

36 


their  demand  for  the  reduction  of  hours  of  labor  more  general,  and  demand 
shortening  of  the  work-day  in  keeping  with  the  increased  productiveness 
of  machinery. ' '  It  may  be  readily  perceived  that  the  reason  for  limiting  the 
demands  of  the  European  Socialists  for  eight  hours,  is  that  eight  hours 
seems  to  them  from  the  standpoint  of  their  existing  ten  or  more  hours,  a 
very  much  shortened  work-day;  when  this  has  been  reduced  to  the  period 
which  they  desire,  and  the  eight  hour  day  becomes  as  common  in  the 
unionized  industries  with  them  as  it  already  is  in  the  United  States,  the 
demand  will  go  up  to  shorten  the  eight-hour  period  as  is  now  the  case  in 
New  Zealand,  and  Australia,  and  as  we  may  shortly  expect  to  arise  in  the 
United  States  with  the  same  fervor,  and  insistence  as  was  placed  by  the 
Unions  behind  their  demands  for  the  eight-hour  day. 

The  present  initiative  bill  affects  chiefly  the  unorganized  laborers, 
particularly  the  agricultural  and  domestic  interests,  the  former  comprising 
the  leading  industry  in  California.  In  certain  states  and  countries  the 
Socialist  eight-hour  program  excludes  agriculture.  Spargo  and  Arner  say : 
"It  is  not  easy  to  see  how  a  measure  like  the  eight  hour  law  is  to  be  applied 
to  agriculture  labor  so  long  as  agriculture  retains  its  present  form.  The 
Socialists  in  Belgium  frankly  face  this  difficulty  and  limit  the  application 
of  the  eight-hour  work-day,  and  other  similar  reforms,  to  the  "industrial 
workers."  The  French  Socialists,  on  the  other  hand,  in  1902,  specifically 
applied  the  measures  for  the  regulation  of  the  hours  of  labor  to  "labor  in 
industry,  commerce  and  agriculture"  without  making  a  definite  statement 
upon  the  point.  American  Socialists  have  largely  followed  the  example  of 
the  Belgians,  and  by  implication  at  least,  regarded  agriculture  labor  as 
outside  the  scope  of  some  of  the  laws  proposed  for  the  regulation  of  the 
hours  of  labor. '  '* 

We  see  therefor,  that  even  according  to  the  program  of  the  American 
Socialists,  their  proposals  in  California  in  the  pending  initiative  are 
different  and  in  excess  of  those  made  generally  in  the  United  States.  It 
may  be  noted  however,  that  the  initiative  bill  as  drafted,  denounces  not  the 
laborer  but  the  employer  and  deals  only  with  the  employer  where  he  acts 
upon  "any  overseer,  superintendent,  foreman  or  other  agent  of  such 
employer,"  and  does  not  make,  it  an  offense  for  the  employer  himself 
without  the  intervention  of  any  agent,  to  suffer  one  to  work  longer  than 
the  prescribed  period.  This  would  indicate  that  the  provision  is  aimed 
solely  at  those  concerns  in  agriculture  or  other  industry  sufficiently  large 
to  employ  help  who  work  under  some  order  of  minister,  and  is  not  intended 
to  thrust  itself  between  the  farmer  and  his  "hired  man."f  The  lunge  is  to 
disable  the  large  concern,  to  strike  a  blow,  in  other  words  at  ' '  capital. ' ' 

The  idea  that  by  doing  less  work  there  remains  more  work  to  be  done, 
that  by  shortening  the  labor-day  more  men  will  be  employed,  and  that  the 


*Elements  of  Socialism,  p.  343. 


tThe  second  initiative,  however,  reaches  the  employer  without  regard  to  the  agent, 
and  makes  it  a  jail  offence  "to  hire  or  require"  any  employee  to  work  more  than  forty-eight 
hours  in  one  week,  except  in  the  cases  limited  by  the  bill.  In  neither  instance  can  the 
laborer  himself  do  any  wrong;  he  is  not  reached  by  the  act,  except  as  his  hiring  in  the 
proscribed  manner  is  forbidden. 

37 


laborer  is  thereby  benefitted,  is  a  belief  that  pervades  both  labor  unionism 
and  Socialism,  and  is  a  twin  doctrine  to  that  to  which  I  previously 
advertedt,  viz:  that  limitation  of  output  is  to  the  advantage  of  the  laborer, 
for  if  men  produce  more  than  a  given  modicum,  the  interests  of  fellow 
workers  are  thereby  jeopardized.  To  the  same  category  belongs  the  doctrine 
that  work  can  be  "made,"  which  expresses  itself  in  the  practice  of  loading 
upon  an  industry  superfluous  laborers,  the  creating  of  jobs  where  none 
economically  exist,  merely  for  the  sake  of  giving  employment  to  labor. 
This  is  expressed  in  the  "full  crew"  statutes  such  as  obtain  in  California* 
and  was  lately  proposed  by  the  shipping  bill  in  Congress.  The  Calumet 
strike  in  upper  Michigan  of  the  Western  Federation  of  Miners,  which  raged 
during  1913,  grew  out  of  a  demand  by  the  laborers  that  two  men  be 
employed  on  the  one-man  power  drills,  an  improved  piece  of  machinery 
which  displaced  the  two  man  drill.J  The  "making  of  work"  for  the  extra 
man  on  the  drill  is  consonant  with  the  "making  of  work"  for  the  unem- 
ployed by  the  shortening  of  the  work-day  to  eight  hours.  These  principles 
are  commonly  believed  to  be  correct.  They  are  taught  by  our  collegiates, 
accepted  by  "business  men,"  and  acted  upon  by  legislatures,  yet  they  are 
completely  erroneous.  For  as  the  less  work  that  is  done,  the  less  produce 
is  created,  and  as  the  less  the  produce  the  less  the  demand  for  labor,  it  is 
manifest  that  by  slacking  off  on  either  time  of  work,  or  quantity  of  product, 
the  laborer  is  but  denying  to  others  the  opportunity  to  get  jobs,  while 
through  holding  down  production  he  is  creating  scarcity  and  raising  the 
prices  which  he  must  pay  when  he  converts  his  coin  wages  into  his  real 
wages,  namely  the  things  he  buys.  So  that  while  the  laborer,  through  short- 
ening his  time  of  labor,  and  half  working  during  the  period  that  he  does 
work,  is  making  things  easier  for  himself,  he  is  paying  for  that  ease  by 
reducing  his  own  wages  through  increasing  prices  in  the  market,  and 
while  he  may  be  creating  jobs  for  a  few  of  the  out-of-work  laborers,  he  is 
starving  the  others  in  their  idleness,  through  pushing  up  prices  of  food 
beyond  their  ability  to  buy,  and  he  is  moreover  setting  in  motion  the  forces 
which  restrict  such  industry  as  exists  to  narrower  limits,  thereby  again 
reacting  to  push  out  of  employment  a  number  perhaps  equal  to  the  new 
ones  which  the  change  engaged.  The  calling  in  of  more  men  to  do  the  work 
now  done,  which  may  be  conceded  as  a  result  of  the  proposed  new 
universal  eight-hour  schedule,  would  primarily  reduce  wages.  If  a  man 
now  received  $2.50  per  day  for  ten  hours,  he  would  then  receive  $2 
per  day  for  eight  hours,  for  the  change  would  mean  that  20%  more 
men  would  have  to  be  put  on  to  do  the  given  complement  of  work.  But 
it  is  the  purpose  of  the  Socialist  that  the  rate  of  wages  shall  not  be 
decreased;  indeed,  there  was  by  the  Socialists  presented  to  the  Secretary 
of  State  another  initiative  proposal  to  have  been  submitted  to  the  electors  in 

tPage  30,  note. 


*  Statutes  of  1911,  Ch.  49,  requiring  two  brakemen,  besides  conductor  and  baggage  men, 
on  all  trains  of  four  passenger  coaches  or  on  any  freight  or  work  train. 

JSee  "An  Economist  on  the  Copper  Strike,"  Review  of  Reviews^  April,   1914. 

38 


the  same  manner,  and  at  the  same  time  as  the  eight-hour  projects,  fixing 
a  universal  minimum  wage  at  $2.50  per  day,  but  through  some  defect 
contained  in  the  petition,  it  was  not  certified.  It  may  however,  be  expected 
to  be  cured  and  brought  forward  at  the  succeeding  State  election.  The 
two  laws,  the  eight  hour  set,  and  a  $2.50  minimum  wage,  would,  it  was 
doubtless  believed,  go  admirably  together — the  minimum  wrage  would 
prevent  the  employer  from  reducing  the  rate  of  wages  when  the  eight  hour 
laws  took  effect. 

In  default  of  a  law,  the  implement  by  which  the  rate  of  wages  would 
be  protected  from  reduction  would  be  the  strike,  and  as  the  matter  was  of 
general  concern  among  unorganized  laborers,  we  should  expect  an  I.  W.  W. 
mass  strike,  in  which  once  and  assumedly  for  all,  the  question  would  be 
fought  out,  in  the  presence  of  rotting  crops  and  all  other  forms  of  waste 
incident  to  such  conflict,  for  which  the  Socialist  cares  nothing  whatever. 
Let  it  be  allowed,  however,  that  wages  are  permanently  held  at  $2.50  for 
eight  hours;  here  is  a  20%  increase  in  wages.  The  question  arises,  who 
will  pay  it?  The  Socialist  thinks  it  will  be  paid  by  the  employer;  but  the 
employer  knows  it  will  be  paid  by  the  consumer,  from  whom  it,  and  all 
added  incidental  costs,  will  be  collected  through  a  raise  in  prices.  When 
' * workingmen 's  compensation"  went  into  effect  in  New  York,  for  instance, 
fixing  upon  the  employer  the  burden  of  paying  to  employees  injured  while 
in  their  service  given  sums  of  money,  the  employers  placed  the  risk  with 
insurance  companies,  and  charged  the  premiums  up  against  their  customers 
by  adding  one  cent  per  bundle  to  the  otherwise  free  delivery  of  laundry, 
the  customer  having  called  to  his  attention  that  the  penny  was  for  the 
payment  of  workmen's  insurance.  It  would  be  idle  to  quote  instances  of 
the  universal  practice  of  shifting  these  charges  from  the  employer,  the 
producer,  to  the  consumer.  All  taxes  and  burdens,  save  the  tax  upon  the 
value  of  land,  are  and  must  be  so  shifted,  else  industry  could  not  exist. 
Whatever  increases  the  cost  of  production,  must  necessarily  increase  the 
cost  of  the  product  to  the  purchaser. 

Since  the  purchasers  are  for  the  greater  part  the  laborers  who  receive 
the  increased  wages,  and  as  all  records  show  that  the  percentage  of  rise  in 
the  cost  of  living  is  always  greater  than  the  percentage  of  rise  in  wages, 
it  is  apparent  that  escape  from  the  effects  of  "the  wage  system"  for  the 
laborer  is  impossible.  He  does  not  and  cannot  increase  his  wages  by 
driving  up  the  price  of  wages.  "I  receive  $100  per  month,"  said  a  bar- 
keeper in  San  Francisco  to  me  recently.  "I  have  been  twenty  years  at 
this  business,  and  our  wages;  have  never  been  increased."  "Then, "  I 
replied,  "they  have  been  reduced."  "No,"  he  answered,  "they  are  just 
the  same."  "Yes,"  I  said,  "but  when  you  go  to  buy  things  with  your 
wages,  you  find  prices  have  increased  nearly  100%  to  what  they  were 
twenty  years  ago,  do  you  not"?  "Oh,"  he  returned,  "if  you  look  at  it 
that  way,  of  course  my  wages  have  been  reduced." 

And  here  is  the  whole  trouble,  the  whole  cause  of  the  ' '  industrial 

39 


unrest,"  which  Chairman  Weinstock  so  earnestly  inquired  of  Doctor 
Nearing  the  cause  of,  and  to  which  the  latter  was  unable  to  give  a  reply, 
viz:  It  is  caused  by  the  desire  of  laborers  to  procure  for  their  services 
higher  than  economic  wages.  They  can  never  get  it.  As  soon  as  higher 
than  economic  wages  is  paid  to  them,  the  excess  is  added  to  the  cost  and 
they  pay  it  back  again  in  higher  prices.*  The  ultimate  effect  of  this  process 
is  to  promote  scarcity  and  to  narrow  the  zone  of  labor,  constantly  holding 
opportunity  to  labor  away  from  a  vast  multitude  known  as  "the  unem- 
ployed, ' '  for  whom  the  Socialists  pretend  to  exercise  such  care. 

When  the  halibut  fishermen  of  Seattle  demanded  of  the  boat  owners 
"a  larger  percentage  of  the  catch"  for  their  wages,  the  latter  had  no 
difficulty  in  deciding  that  question.  The  catch  was  100%  ;  so  much  of  this 
had  to  go  to  repair  and  depreciation  of  the  boats,  so  much  for  parapher- 
nalia, so  much  to  pay  interest  on  hired  or  invested  capital  and  so  much  for 
overhead  charges,  wharfage,  insurance,  etc.  As  these  charges  were  fixed, 
the  issue  was  between  wages  and  profits.  The  latter  was  an  amount  which 
the  employer  considered  necessary  to  make  the  business  sufficiently  attract- 
ive to  hold  him  into  it.  If  he  were  obliged  to  give  up  this,  or  encroach 
upon  it  to  the  extent  of  being  dissatisfied  with  it,  he  would  leave  the  enter- 
prise. Very  assuredly  he  would  not  continue  business  through  the 
eleemosynary  impulse  of  finding  employment  for  laborers.  When  there- 
fore, these  fishermen  not  content  with  their  allotted  proportion,  struck,  the 
answer  of  the  skippers,  in  the  coarse  vernacular  of  the  sea  was,  "Quit  and 
be  damned,  we'll  go  out  of  the  business;"  and  had  the  laborers  not  yielded, 
there  would  have  been  one  less  industry  in  existence,  and  a  salty  regiment 
added  to  the  ' '  army  of  the  unemployed. ' ' 

Had,  however,  the  fishermen  been  working  on  wages  of  so  much  per 
month,  the  employers  might  have  granted  their  demand  for  increase,  which 
they  must  at  once  have  turned  upon  the  price  of  the  fish  and  collected  from 
the  purchaser.  Halibut  would  have  been  higher  in  the  market ;  many 
who  had  been  eating  halibut  would  now  prefer  to  eat  another  fish,  better 
and  of  equal  price,  and  there  would  be  need  for  less  halibut  than  there- 
tofore. A  concern  that  ran  many  boats,  in  other  words,  a  "capitalist," 
would  run  a  lesser  number  of  boats,  and  some  crews  would  be  laid  off. 


*See  Associated  Press  reports  dated  Washington,  June  21,  1913,  as  follows:  Except 
sugar,  every  principal  article  of  food  of  the  fifteen  staples,  representing  about  two-thirds 
of  the  expenditure  for  food  by  the  average  workingman's  family,  showed  a  decided  increase 
in  retail  price  on  February  15,  1913,  compared  with  the  average  price  for  the  ten-year 
period,  1890-1899,  according  to  the  latest  investigation  of  the  statisticians  of  the  Bureau 
of  Labor.  The  prices  were  collected  in  thirty-nine  important  industrial  cities  in  which 
live  one-fifth  of  the  total  population  of  the  continental  United  States.  Sirloin  steak,  60.8 
per  cent;  round  steak,  48.5  ;  rib  roast,  46.7  ;  pork  chops,  89.4  ;  smoked  hams,  69.1  ;  smoked 
bacon,  111.6  ;  pure  lard,  62.3  ;  hens,  66.6  ;  wheat  flour,  27.4  :  corn-meal,  56.1  ;  strictly  fresh 
eggs,  56.0  ;  creamery  butter,  63.5  :  potatoes,  23.6  ;  fresh  milk,  40.1.  There  was  an  advance 
of  3.2  per  cent  over  February  15,  1912,  in  the  relative  prices  weighted  according  to  the 
average  consumption  of  the  various  articles  of  food  in  working-men's  families. 

The  same  phenomenon  is  observed  in  England,  and  exists  in  all  countries  which  in 
recent  years  have  been  the  theatres  of  increasing  demands  of  laborers  for  higher  wages 
with  their  attendant  shortening  of  labor  hours  and  strikes.  U.  S.  Consul  Albert  Halstead 
at  Birmingham,  England,  points  out  that  the  purchasing  power  of  the  English  sovereign  or 
pound  ($4.8665  in  American  money)  has  decreased  as  compared  with  the  American  dollar, 
in  1895,  to  $3.95  in  1912,  the  equivalent  of  63  cents  American  money.  These  figures  were 
determined  upon  the  power  of  the  money  to  purchase  23  articles  of  food  included  in  the 
P'MtiFh  Beard  of  Trade's  index  numbers  for  retail  prices.  U.  S.  Consular  Report,  March 
27,  1913. 

40 


Individual  boats  would  not  be  able  to  sell  all  their  fish  at  the  high  prices 
demanded,  and  quantities  to  be  sold  at  all  would  have  to  be  disposed  of  at  a 
lower  price;  this  would  break  the  market,  and  bring  upon  them  war  by 
the  larger  concerns,  with  whom  they  would  presently  consolidate;  prices 
would  then  be  fixed  at  a  uniform  figure,  and  we  would  have  a  "halibut 
trust."  The  result  of  this  operation  would  be  to  hold  down  the  catch  to 
the  limit  of  what  the  market  at  the  arbitrary  price  fixed  would  consume, 
and  lay  off  all  superfluous  labor;  at  the  same  time  to  fight  out  of  existence 
by  whatever  order  of  squeeze  or  force  might  be  employed,  any  "independ- 
ents" who  might  try  to  get  into  the  business.  Had  higher  wages,  however, 
not  been  demanded,  and  the  market  price  of  the  fish  not  thereby  affected, 
business  would  have  gone  on  as  before,  the  several  boat  concerns  competing 
with  one  another,  their  competition  holding  a  reasonable  price  upon  the 
market,  a  reasonable  profit  and  a  reasonable  wage.  The  new  comer  who 
should  come  in  could  not  permanently  effect  this  condition;  he  might 
disorganize  business  for  a  while  by  selling  his  fish  cheaper  than  the  others, 
but  he  would  do  so  at  a  sacrifice  of  reasonable  profits,  and  that  would  not 
long  continue,  when  either  he  or  the  weakest  in  the  field  would  find  it  more 
profitable  to  go  off  into  some  more  attractive  order  of  business.  If,  how- 
ever, he  was  able  to  continue  selling  at  lower  prices,  it  would  indicate  that 
his  methods  were  superior  to  those  of  the  others;  he  had  better  tackle,  or 
better  bait,  or  he  managed  his  men  and  business  more  efficiently,  and  this 
circumstance  would  force  the  others  to  mend  their  ways,  and  we  would 
have  the  influence  of  competition  driving  an  industry  to  a  higher  plane  of 
performance  and  service,  which  is  the  essential  and  natural  quality  of 
competition. 

It  can  also  be  seen  that  minimum  wages  can  be  of  no  real  benefit  to 
the  laborer.  Minimum  wages  is  an  endeavor  to  increase  to  a  given  figure 
wages  of  those  who  get  less  than  the  minimum.  The  answer  of  the  employer 
is  to  lay  off  those  whom  he  deems  earns  less  than  the  minimum,  or  if  he 
is  forced  to  pay  it,  thus  much  more  is  added  to  the  cost  of  running  the 
business  and  to  the  price  of  the  product.* 

But  let  us  consider  that  the  product  of  the  industry  is  not  a  commodity, 
but  a  service,  and  a  public  service  at  that.  Take  for  instance  a  railroad. 
We  have  the  spectacle  of  sort  of  by  common  consent  the  railroads  of  the 
nation  passed  over  to  an  Interstate  Commission  possessed  of  practically 
plenary  powers  over  them,  and  in  the  event  that  any  crevice  be  left  in  the 
zone  of  their  activities,  through  which  they  may  escape  the  espionage 
imposed  upon  them  by  Congress,  there  is  created  in  the  several  States  local 
boards  of  public  utilities  charged  with  the  duty  of  playing  the  field  against 

*The  legislative  minimum  wage  as  applied  to  private  employment  necessarily  restricts 
the  liberty  of  contract,  creates  an  arbitrary  discrimination  bptween  one  class  and  another, 
not  only  of  employers,  but  also  of  employees,  and  compels  the  employer  to  contribute,  out 
of  his  investment  and  out  of  his  earnings,  for  the  benefit  of  his  employees  and  for  their 
sustenance,  as  well  as  for  the  general  public  benefit.  Such  statute,  therefore,  controvenes 
the  express  terms  of  the  Federal  constitution,  prohibiting  any  State  from  enforcing  any 
law  which  deprives  a  citizen  of  liberty  or  of  property  without  due  process  of  law,  or 
which  denies  to  any  citizen  the  equal  protection  of  the  laws.  The  Minimum  Wage.  By 
Rome  G.  Brown,  Minneapolis,  Minn. 

41 


them.    A  certain  order  of  State  or  Federal  interference  in  such  businesses 
is  desirable  and  proper.    We  have  seen  by  the  New  Haven  railroad  incident 
to  which  I  have  referred,  and  by  many  kindred  instances  of  even  recent 
occurrence,  such  as  the  Frisco  railroad  matter,  that  it  is  highly  needful  in 
the  case  of  a  great  corporation  receiving  the  funds  with  which  to  install  or 
carry  on  its  enterprise  from  stock  and  bond  holders  who  buy  their  securities 
often  on  the  public  market,  that  these  should  be  protected  against  the  acts 
of  an  inside  group  who  comprise  the  board  of  directors  and  who  often  owe 
their  positions,  not  to  their  own  moneys  invested  in  the  properties,  but  to 
funds  of  others  under  their  control.     Experience  has  shown  that  bank 
commissions,  insurance  commissions  and  such  like  boards  are  the  necessary 
intervention  of  government  to  protect  one  set  of  men  against  another. 
That  men  given  a  free  hand  to  use  their  discretions,  aside  from  the  per- 
formance of  ministerial  duties  which  are  circumscribed  by  written  regula- 
tions, cannot  be  altogether  trusted.     Concepts  of  their  own  advantage  will 
conflict  with  their  sense  of  duty  to  advantage  others,  while  mere  errors  in 
judgment  often  occasion  losses  that  another  order  of  deliberation  would 
have  prevented.     This  is  not  exceptional  in  practice,  for  it  often  occurs; 
wherefore  the  presence  of  the  State  in  its  function  of  preventing  wrong, 
of  securing  to  each  his  rights,  is  wise  and  necessary.    The  bank  commission 
regards  the  relation  of  the  bank  management  to  its  depositors;  the  insur- 
ance commission  notes  the  ability  of  the  company  to  pay  its  policy  holders. 
These  aspects  deal  only  with  the  ability  of  the  corporation  to  pay  its 
obligees.     In  the  case  of  the  railroads  and  other  public  utilities,  however, 
the  State  supervision  takes  a  wholly  different  turn.     Instead  of  standing 
between  the  management  and  its  investors  it  stands  between  the  company 
and  its  customers — not  those  to  whom  the  company  owes  anything,  but  to 
those  to  whom  it  renders  service.     The  company  is  not  permitted  to  deter- 
mine the  price  of  its  product  but  this  is  fixed  for  it  by  the  Board,  through 
the  process  of  rate  making,  which  rates  are  determined  not  by  the  value  of 
the  service  rendered,  but  by  the  amount  of  money  invested  in  active,  as 
distinguished  from  inactive  property  of  the  company,  and  this  arranged 
to  permit  the  investors  a  return  of  seven  per  cent  upon  the  amount  of  such 
sums.*     The  State  in  such  case  is  the  agent  of  the  customer,  seizing  the 
property  of  the  company,  and  compelling  it  to  render  service  at  such  price 
as  the  customer  feels  it  to  his  interest  to  pay.    It  is  inconceivable  that  any 
scheme   could  be  more   oppressive   or   unjust.      This   operation  is   highly 
Socialistic.    It  is  an  explicit  expression  of  the  Roosevelt  order  of  Socialism, 
which  absorbs  to  the  State  the  property  of  the  citizen  while  permitting 
the  nominal  operation  of  it  to  remain  in  his  hands.     The  State,  while  not 
assuming  active  possession,  at  once  enters  into  control  of  the  property,  and 
asserts  over  it  the  power  of  a  proprietor,  converting  the  owners  into  its 


*In  the  Kansas  City  Southern  case,  the  Supreme  Court. of  the  United  States  held  that 
portions  of  a  railroad,  abandoned  in  process  of  grade  revision  work,  cannot  be  regarded  as 
a  part  of  capital  investment  for  rate  making  purposes,  notwithstanding  such  had  entailed 
cost  upon  the  owners  of  the  road. 

42':- 


agents,  issuing  to  them  orders  moved  by  its  will,  and  compelling  obedience 
thereto  by  its  armed  or  civil  force.  This  exappropriation  of  public  utilities 
by  the  State  is  distinctly  recognized;  the  several  commissions  proceed  defi- 
nitely upon  the  lines  that  the  owners  of  these  industries  have  no  longer  any 
rights  to  their  properties,  where  such  rights  come  into  conflict  with  their 
wills.  "As  Railroad  Commissioner  Eshleman  truthfully  says,  investors  in 
public  utilities  are  absolutely  at  the  mercy  of  the  public  which  they 
serve."*  The  result  of  this  incursion  has  been  to  "knock  the  bottom  out 
of  public  utility  securities."  There  has  followed  a  general  decline  of 
market  values  of  all  such  issues.  One  authority,  whose  statements  find 
common  acceptance  and  quotation  among  business  men,  asserts  that  since 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  commenced  its  operations,  the  rail- 
roads of  the  country  have  lost  three  billions  of  dollars  in  market  slough  of 
their  securities.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  people,  who  had  invested  their 
savings  in  these  evidences  of  indebtedness,  have  watched  the  stockboard 
reports  day  by  day  and  found  their  investments  crumbling f  until  ultimately, 
in  many  cases,  they  were  swept  completely  out  of  their  hands  by  reorganiza- 
tions of  the  corporations  and  "scalings  down"  of  outstanding  securities. 
The  result  has  been  a  tremendous  falling -off  in  sales  of  these  debentures. 
Public  confidence  in  them  has  been,  if  not  foregone,  at  least  badly  shaken. 
The  public  observes  the  spectacle  of  continuously  rising  operating  expenses, 
through  constantly  increasing  cost  of  materials  and  ever  repeated  demands 
for  higher  wages,  made  upon  the  several  concerns  by  the  unions  en  masse, 
to  refuse  which  is  to  subject  the  properties  and  businesses  to  the  destructive 
war  of  strikes;  with  the  volume  of  traffic  fluctuating  between  slight  rises 
and  severe  declines,  the  recent  movements  being  sharply  downward;  for 
the  effect  of  the  high  prices  which  the  unions  create  is,  as  I  have  explained 
in  prior  pamphlets,  to  narrow  the  zone  of  distribution  from  the  point  of 
production — with  increases  in  business  attended  with  decreased  gross  earn- 
ings; and  the  power  of  charging  for  their  service  taken  wholly  out  of  the 
companies'  hands;  the  office  of  fixing  rates  being  transferred  to  the  several 
commissions,  who  refuse  to  permit  raises  in  rates  when  the  companies  appeal 
therefor;  but  who  treat  themselves  as  standing  between  the  railroad  and 
the  customer,  in  fact  as  representing  the  customer,  intent  on  allowing  the 
owners  only  sufficient  of  rates  to  continue  them  in  business.  Seeing  this, 
the  proposed  purchaser  regards  the  future  of  the  utilities  as  doubtful,  as 
tending  to  fall  in  value,  and  he  withholds  investment.  The  result  is  that 
the  utility  cannot  get  necessary  moneys  to  move  forward  with  needed 
constructions  in  the  extension  or  increase  of  their  systems  in  the  rendition 
of  further  service ;  while  such  a  thing  as  the  advent  of  new  capital  into  the 
field  to  put  in  a  railroad  or  else  here  and  there  where  opportunity  offers,  is 


*San  Francisco  Chronicle,  July  13,  1914. 


fA  client  said  to  me  recently :  "Twelve  years  ago  I  invested  a  large  fortune  in  stocks 
and  bonds,  all  of  public  utilities,  railroad  and  other.  They  were  carefully  selected,  and 
all  gilt  edged.  Today  they  represent  a  decline  in  value  of  from  forty  to  sixty  per  cent  of 
the  market  prices  at- which  I  purchased  them." 

43 


practically  out  of  the  question.  There  ensues  a  static  and  deadening  state 
of  things,  with  cries  going  up  in  many  quarters  for  the  government  to  take 
over  the  railroads  and  operate  them,  a  chorus  increased  in  volume  by  the 
utilities  themselves,  and  which,  without  any  doubt,  must  ultimately  be 
acceded  to. 

The  effect  of  this  process  is  the  effect  of  all  Socialistic  operations;  it  is 
to  destroy  initiative.  The  life,  the  sap,  is  taken  out  of  business,  and  there 
is  left  an  inert,  unprogressive,  horizontalized  mass,  in  which  the  active  and 
pushing  spirits  are  held  down  to  the  common  level.  Seven  per  cent,  while 
it  would  satisfy  bonds,  will  not  sell  stock;  and  bonds  will  not  find  pur- 
chasers unless  stock  be  sold.*  The  man  who  buys  stock  buys  with  a  risk. 
He  pins  his  faith  upon  the  character  of  the  road,  its  territory  and  its 
management.  He  stands  to  take  profits  or  suffer  loss  according  to  the 
mutations  of  the  business  fairly  administered,  and  unhampered  by  the 
vitiating  interference  of  the  State.  Where  the  State  comes  forward  and 
deliberately  operates  to  destroy  his  property,  upon  the  hypothesis  that  a 
somewhat  larger  group  of  citizens,  namely  the  customers,  may  be  made  to 
profit  by  such  destruction,  and  when  this  to  the  general  public  mind  seems 
a  proper  and  reasonable  exercise  of  the  State 's  functions,  we  are  indeed  far 
along  toward  that  goal  to  which  the  doctrines  of  Mr.  Debs,  Mr.  Roosevelt 
and  Prof.  Seligman  have  been  carrying  us. 

The  pretext  upon  which  the  State  assumes  to  interfere  in  rates  of 
public  utilities  is  that  they  are  essentially  monopolies,  and  the  State  has  a 
right  to  protect  the  citizen  against  monopoly;  further  that  they  exist  by 
right  of  public  franchises,  whose  use  carries  with  it  the  right  of  the  State 
to  interpose  conditions  under  which  they  shall  be  exercised.  But  a  railroad 
is  no  more  the  user  of  a  franchise  than  is  a  store  on  the  corner ;  for  while 
the  railroad  may  cross  thoroughfares  or  run  along  a  public  street,  the  store 
conducts  its  business  by  admitting  its  customers  from  the  front  street  and 
receiving  and  discharging  its  goods  on  the  side  street ;  and  the  circumstance 
that  a  public  utility  may  compel  one  along  its  right  of  way  to  sell  sufficient 
of  his  property,  at  the  sum  a  jury  may  fix,  to  satisfy  the  uses  of  the  road, 
is  a  flimsy  basis  for  permitting  that  property  owner  and  others  of  the 
public  to  seize  the  road  and  make  it  do  his  business  at  prices  they  are 
willing  to  pay. 

Nor  is  the  argument  of  monopoly  any  more  satisfying  than  the  above. 
It  is  not  a  fact  that  public  utilities  are  in  their  nature  monopolies;  or  if 
so  they  are  such  only  to  a  slight  degree,  wholly  un justifying  the  practical 
confiscation  of  the  properties  which  has  supervened,  even  assuming  that 
the  fact  that  their  being  monopolies  could  justify  such  sequestration.  It 
has  been  the  experience  of  the  nation  in  all  its  parts,  that  wherever  business 
served  by  a  monopoletic  public  utility  increased  in  size  to  sustain  two 
concerns,  another  like  utility  would  seek  to  come  into  the  field,  and  arriving 

*See  "The  Wage  That  Attracts  Capital,"  article  by  Ray  Morris,  Atlantic  Monthly,  June, 
1914,  in  which  the  author  remarks:  "The  curious  economic  handicap  which  seeks  to  limit 
capital's  maximum  return  to  a  low  percentage,  without  any  compensating  guarantee  of  a 
minimum  return." 

44 


there  would  compete  with  the  established  enterprise.  This  fact  is  notorious. 
It  is  manifest  by  the  examination  of  any  railroad  map  of  the  United  States 
or  of  any  State.  It  is  true  that  the  tendency  of  one  utility  in  the  field  is 
to  try  to  keep  another  out,  or  to  absorb  it  after  it  has  succeeded  in  getting 
in;  and  under  conditions  that  have  prevailed  it  is  the  proper  function  of 
the  State,  and  the  proper  sphere  of  the  commissions,  to  prevent  the  accom- 
plishment of  this  sort  of  thing.  One  man  has  as  much  right  to  serve  the 
public,  through  the  medium  of  a  public  utility,  as  another;  and  if  I  seek 
to  serve  water  to  a  city  the  existing  concern  has  no  right  to  go  into  fthe 
territory  of  my  watersheds  and  buy  strategic  pieces  of  land  for  the  purpose 
of  preventing  my  accumulating  and  delivering  water,  or  to  go  into  the 
financial  field  and  slander  me  to  my  bankers,  or  go  along  my  proposed 
right  of  way  and  stir  up  trouble  for  me  among  the  owners  whose  lands  I 
must  acquire,  and  so  on.  Here  is  where  the  heavy  hand  of  the  commission 
should  properly  come  in.  But  it  has  no  right  to  say,  as  it  does  say,  that  I 
must  keep  out  of  a  given  field  in  order  that  the  concern  already  there  might 
endure  without  competition,  leaving  it  to  the  Board  to  determine  the  rates 
which  competition  would  adjust  could  I  get  into  the  territory.  Such  an 
operation  is  to  further  the  monopoly  which  the  scheme  of  commissions  is 
claimed  to  be  created  to  prevent.  We  have  lately  had  a  singular  illustration 
of  this  confusion  of  principles  in  the  tearing  apart  by  the  Federal  power 
of  the  Union  and  Southern  Pacific  Railroads  on  the  ground  that  they  are 
parallel  lines,  hence  competing  concerns.  How  the  government  can  recon- 
cile its  position  in  interfering  with  the  properties  of  the  owners  of  these 
roads  on  the  ground  that  they  do  not  compete,  while  maintaining  an  estab- 
lishment which  fixes  a  schedule  of  rates  under  which  they  could  not  compete, 
I  am  unable  to  understand. 

Nor  can  it  be  said  that  the  fact  that  the  railroads  watered  their  stock, 
and  issued  bonds  disproportionate  to  the  amount  invested  in  the  properties, 
upon  which  they  looked  to  pay  dividends  and  interest  out  of  rates,  justifies 
in  any  way  the  State  to  come  forward  and  seize  the  properties  and  direct 
their  management.  That  such  things  were  done  is  a  matter  solely  between 
the  stockholders,  the  bondholders  and  the  boards  of  directors.  That  this 
field  is  a  proper  one  in  large  concerns  for  exercise  by  the  State  in  the 
interest  of  fairness  between  man  and  man,  I  have  already  observed,  but 
in  so  far  as  the  customer  goes,  the  State  has  no  business  to  regard  either 
stock,  bonds  or  investments.  The  question  as  to  the  customer  is  what  is 
the  service  worth  compared  with  other  modes  of  transportation  or  travel; 
and  it  would  be  an  extreme  case  indeed,  in  which  any  bill  could  be  framed 
in  a  court  of  equity  by  a  customer  which  would  sustain  him  in  refusing 
to  pay  a  rate  upon  the  ground  that  the  corporation  held  the  only  channel 
of  communication,  and  had  cut  him  from  its  use  by  extortionate  charges. 
Indeed  there  are  at  present  competitive  forces  with  railroads  which  of  them- 
selves tend  strongly  to  regulate  rates  of  the  latter.  The  traction  truck,  the 
automobile,  the  electric  railway  have  all  made  heavy  inroads  upon  the 

45 


business  of  steam  traffic,  and  would  naturally  force  a  line  of  healthy 
competition  in  rates  by  the  latter  in  order  that  business  should  go  forward. 
If  the  steam  roads  should  go  down  in  this  conflict,  it  would  mean  that  the 
public  was  being  served  by  superior  methods ;  if  they  did  not,  there  would 
be  a  demonstration  that  through  the  free  course  of  operation  of  the  natural 
forces  in  business,  traffic  had  been  built  up  to  support  the  maintenance  of 
several  modes  of  transportation. 

The  corollary  of  it  all  is  that  men  in  business  should  be  left  to  conduct 
their  business.  They  should  be  permitted,  without  interference  by  the 
State,  to  make  all  the  money  they  fairly  can.  To  concede  that  the  State 
possesses  a  right  to  fix  the  prices  of  public  utility  service,  is  to  allow  that 
it  has  a  similar  right  to  fix  the  price  of  every  service  and  of  every  commodity 
exchanged  amongst  the  people.  The  line  where  the  State  and  citizen  meet 
becoming  blurred,  there  is  no  guide;  our  drift  moves  toward  Socialism. 
Indeed  under  such  conditions  the  owners  of  the  public  utility  themselves 
cry  out  for  Socialism  and  beseech  the  State  to  take  over  the  complete 
ownership  and  operation  of  their  properties,  and  restore  them  whatever 
residue  of  their  invested  funds  the  State  may  be  pleased  to  give  them, 
permit  them  to  take  their  money  and  go  elsewhere.  We  have  seen  the 
instance  of  the  State  fixing  the  prices  of  wages  in  the  minimum  wage; 
fixing  the  price  of  service  in  deciding  rates ;  it  does  not  therefor  surprise 
us  to  find  able  men  advocating  the  State  fixing  the  prices  of  products.  No 
less  personages  than  Attorney  General  Wickersham  and  Judge  Gary,  head 
of  the  Steel  Corporation,  proposed  in  1911  that  the  government,  "in  order 
to  control  great  aggregations  of  wealth,  would  find  it  to  its  advantage,  and 
might  find  it  absolutely  necessary  to  exercise  over  industrial  organizations 
the  same  power  of  regulation  that  it  now  exercises  over  interstate  railroads. '  ' 
That  "since  Congress  had  provided  means  for  preventing  discrimination 
and  unreasonableness  in  the  prices  charged  for  interstate  transportation,  it 
might  establish  a  similar  legislative  rule  with  respect  of  prices  which  are 
the  subject  of  interstate  commerce."  The  fiction  here  brought  forward  to 
serve  the  idea  of  investing  the  State  with  grounds  of  interference  with 
the  rights  of  the  citizen  is  "interstate  commerce,"  the  crossing  by  a  product 
of  the  boundary  line  of  a  State.  One  is  reminded  of  the  moral  to  the  old 
school  reader  story  of  the  wolf  and  the  lamb:  "He  who  is  determined  to 
do  a  wrong  action  is  seldom  at  loss  for  a  pretext."  We  can  readily  see 
how  quickly,  with  such  a  Federal  law  in  existence,  the  States  would  adopt 
laws  applying  the  principle  to  all  commodities  not  of  an  interstate  char- 
acter. The  trouble  is  that  men,  under  the  influence  of  Socialistic  dogma, 
have  lost  their  grasp  upon  the  place  where  the  right  of  the  citizen  ends, 
and  the  function  of  the  State  begins. 

If  these  gentlemen  will  look  to  it  they  will  find  that  the  ' i  great  aggre- 
gations of  wealth"  which  they  assume  it  is  for  some  reason  desirable  that 
the  government  should  control,  rest,  in  whatever  pernicious  aspect  they 
may  present  to  the  public  welfare,  upon  some  type  of  monopoly,  which  if 

46 


removed,  there  would  be  found  nothing  objectionable  in  the  further  exist- 
ence of  such  aggregations,  even  supposing  they  would  thereafter  continue 
to  aggregate.  They  would  find  that  what  makes  any  of  them  menacing 
is  the  fact  that  they  stand  to  the  industry  of  which  they  are  a  part  in  some 
position  superior  to  those  who  are  trying  to  be  their  competitors.  And 
that  this  is  due  to  their  having  in  their  exclusive  control  some  kind  of  special 
privilege  resting  in  law;  they  own  extensive  areas  of  iron  ore  deposits,  for 
instance,  only  the  slightest  fraction  of  which  they  use, -or  ever  can  use,:  the 
remaining  they  merely  own  to  keep  out  of  use,  thereby  preventing  any 
other  steel  maker  from  taking  hold  of  and  turning  steel  on  the  market 
in  competition  with  them ;  the  system  which  permits  one  man  to  seize  upon 
such  area  of  the  solid  planet  as  he  cannot  use,  and  stand  others  off  from 
its  use,  is  called  land  monopoly,  and  is  tolerated  by  those  legislatures  whp 
are  adopting  the  divers  Socialistic  expedients  to  correct  a  condition  which 
they  are  thereby  making  worse.  These  gentlemen  may  also  find  that  much 
of  this  special  privilege  rested  upon  patents — exclusive  rights  to  the  use  of 
inventions,  sanctioned  by  the  government,  and  which  may  have  the  quality 
of  converging  entire  industries  into  given  hands.  It  was  the  wish  of 
our  fathers  of  the  Constitution,  in  order  to  encourage  invention,  to 
reward  inventors  with  monopolies  of  their  inventions  for  limited  periods. 
But  the  desire  was  to  recompense  the  inventor  for  an  invention,  not  to  pass 
over  into  his  hands  an  industry,  as  sometimes  occurs  where  there  is 
improved  a  machine  or  process  in  production,  the  result  of  which  is  to 
make  obsolete  former  means,  and  transfer  the  industry  to  the  concern  of 
the  inventor.  While  this  sort  of  thing  may  last  but  during  the  life  of  the 
patent,  yet  it  presents  a  severe  aggravation  to  the  disturbed  conditions 
growing  out  of  the  existence  of  monopolies,  and  it  is  by  no  means  necessary 
to  encourage  and  promote  invention.  The  patent  laws  should  be  changed 
to  afford  the  inventor  a  royalty  upon  his  machines,  with  differentials 
perhaps  to  those  who  first  adopt  it,  in  order  to  draw  customers,  but  having 
done  this  the  government  should  become  his  agent.  Anyone  who  wishes 
to  use  an  invention  should  have  the  privilege  of  doing  so  to  whatever 
extent  he  desires,  by  purchasing  from  the  patent  office,  acting  on  behalf  of 
the  inventor,  the  privilege  of  so  doing.  Here  in  a  sweep  we  would  have 
the  inventor  rewarded,  invention  encouraged,  the  element  of  monopoly 
removed,  and  the  public  would  receive  the  benefit  of  the  invention  on  terms 
of  fair  competition. 

With  these  and  like  special  privileges  removed,  also  rate  discrim- 
ination or  rebates  from  common  carriers,  which  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  have  properly  extinguished  as  inequitable,  there  would  dis- 
appear all  those  elements  that  give  one  concern  in  industry  an  unequal 
advantage  over  another,  such  advantage  resting  in  some  feature  or  incident 
of  law.  Outside  of  law,  such  advantages  as  a  producer  may  acquire  from 
superior  methods,  management,  lawful  combinations,  or  any  other  such 
means,  he  is  entitled  to.  It  is  proper  and  healthy  that  one  man  in  business 

47 


should  try  to  advantage  himself  against  another  where  the  processes  of 
such  advantage  rest  in  his  efforts  along  lawful  lines.  Rivalry  is  necessary 
if  progress  is  to  be  made,  and  if  there  be  those  in  the  industry  who  succumb 
to  rivalry  they  should  be  permitted  to  pass  out,  and  with  no  regrets.  But 
rivalry  should  be  based  upon  equal  law,  and  upon  equal  opportunities  to 
the  resources  of  nature,  which  are  the  common  property  of  mankind,  for 
without  these  there  can  be  no  fairness,  and  we  shall  have  overgrown  and 
menacing  industries  in  one  direction  and  stifled,  struggling  and  underfed 
attempts  at  industry  in  another,  with  the  world  between  howling  like  mad 
over  the  stress  and  strains  of  getting  a  living. 

From  the  foregoing  it  is  manifest  that  only  in  those  cases  where  the 
rights  of  one  conflict  with  the  rights  of  another  is  it  proper  that  the  State 
should  interfere,  and  then  it  should  interpose  to  the  holding  of  an  equal 
hand.  The  railroads  owe  the  public  nothing  but  service,  and  they  should 
be  left  to  charge  for  it  what  they  will,  the  rates  determined  by  competition 
which  would  inevitably  attend  conditions  where  competition  was  justified, 
and  where  it  was  not,  the  ordinary  business  sense  of  increasing  and  building 
up  business  would  cause,  and  has  generally  caused,  the  utilities  to  hold  their 
rates  at  figures  reasonable  and  just.  The  instances  in  which  neither  the 
existence  of  competition  nor  business  sense  has  relieved  from  a  purblind 
policy  of  extortionate  rates  are  rare;  and  such  methods  do  not  in  practice 
long  endure.  These  exceptional  cases  are  no  excuse  for  this  wholesale 
onslaught  by  Congress  and  the  States  upon  the  properties  of  the  citizen, 
the  enormous  losses  to  the  investing  and  to  the  saving  public,  the  disorgani- 
zation of  business,  the  destruction  on  a  tremendous  scale  of  the  quality  of 
initiative  and  the  driving  of  the  nation  headlong,  through  absorption  of 
the  chiefest  property  we  have,  into  the  maelstrom  of  Socialism. 

When  we  consider  the  arguments  now  being  used  in  California  by 
those  who  oppose  the  eight-hour  initiatives,  we  find  certain  of  them  no  less 
remarkable  than  the  proposals  themselves.  Reprehensible  as  the  business 
may  be,  there  are  always  those  who  will  seek  to  deflect  from  themselves 
an  inconvenience  or  an  injury  by  injuring  others.  We  are  told,  for  instance, 
by  the  San  Francisco  Chronicle,  voicing  numerous  speeches  and  pamphlets 
which  have  been  moved  upon  the  matter,  that : 

"The  opinion  is  freely  expressed  that  the  enactment  of  the  proposed 
eight-hour  law  would  transfer  our  fruit  industries  to  Orientals.  It  probably 
would  to  the  extent  that  Orientals  are  available.  The  simplest  way  to 
e)vade  the  provisions  of  the  proposed  act  would  be  to  sell  or  lease  the 
orchards  and  vineyards  to  co-operative  companies,  in  which  each  partner, 
being  an  owner,  could  work  as  many  hours  as  he  pleased.  The  Orientals 
are  accustomed  to  co-operation  of  that  kind  and  readily  fall  into  it.  White 
men  might  gradually  grow  into  it,  but  we  have  not  the  genius  for  co-opera- 
tion that  Orientals  possess,  and  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  farmers 
who  should  find  themselves  thus  driven  from  their  occupation  would  make 
leases  to  Orientals  as  rapidly  as  possible,"*  etcetera,  etcetera,  etcetera, 


'Chronicle,  July  13th,  1914. 

48 


all  of  which  is  most  insufferable  twaddle,  and  of  the  usual  and  characteristic 
kind  that  is  ladled  out  to  the  citizens  of  San  Francisco  whenever  any 
question  affecting  the  welfare  of  the  people  arises.  In  a  quarter  of  a  century 
of  residence  on  this  Coast,  I  have  never  known  a  public  question  to  arise 
in  which  the  old  Oriental  bugaboo  was  not  brought  out  of  the  garret,  the 
muslin  and  bladders  of  which  it  is  composed  touched  up  with  red  paint, 
the  thing  stuffed  with  straw,  and  paraded  up  and  down  the  open  thorough- 
fare for  people  to  get  frightened  at.  It  was  just  one  of  these  exhibitions 
injected  into  a  contest  between  two  groups  of  capitalists  over  the  field  of  a 
public  utility  in  San  Francisco  that  produced  the  exclusion  laws  of  Con- 
gress against  the  Japanese,  an  incident  which  I  have  not  space  to  enter 
upon  in  this  pamphlet.  It  is  manifest  from  a  reading  of  the  Chronicle 
editorial  that  the  writer  of  it  is  not  sincere.  He  does  not  believe  what  he 
writes.  Nor  does  anyone  else  of  ordinary  understanding  believe  it.  It  was, 
indeed,  not  written  to  be  believed;  but  was  written  to  fan  and  keep  alive 
the  race  hatred  of  which  the  Chronicle  is  chiefly  the  author,  against  the 
Oriental  people  on  this  Coast.  Whenever  an  occasion  arises  that  the  Oriental 
can  be  struck  at  from  behind  any  barn  door  of  public  question,  the 
snickersnee  is  drawn  from  its  sheath,  and  a  scrawny  editorial  arm  reaches 
forth  for  a  vicious  swat.  In  this  way  the  Oriental  is  kept  dancing  to 
stinging  blows,  and  the  public  stand  around  and  look  on.  The  adoption 
of  the  eight-hour  bills  would  cause  inconvenience,  annoyance  and  expense 
to  the  farmers,  and  would  have  a  tendency  to  discourage  others  from 
entering  the  business  of  conducting  farms  and  the  several  occupations  in 
which  common  labor  is  largely  employed,  with  a  tendency  to  narrow 
production;  but  it  would  not  drive  anyone  out  of  business.*  It  would  be 
found  in  practice  that  men  would  be  employed  and  paid  largely  by  the 
hour,  and  work  would  go  on  just  the  same  as  theretofore ;  a  greater  number 
of  men  would  have  to  be  held  on  the  ranch  or  at  the  lumber  yards  to  do 
the  work  than  is  now  the  case,  but  work  would  begin  and  quit  at  the  same 
hours  then  as  now,  and  other  than  depriving  the  laborers  severally  from 
earning  as  much  as  they  do  at  present,  or  increasing  the  price  of  products 
to  the  consumer,  and  possibly  of  both,  the  eight-hour  laws  would  have  no 
effect.  Legislation  may  hamper  industry,  but  it  cannot  stop  it.  Where  the 
statutes  are  unreasonable  and  preventive  of  industrial  operations  if  fully 


*We  own  a  small  ranch  in  a  neighborhood  of  small  ranches.  We  formerly  kept  one 
hired  man  for  choring  and  keeping  up  the  place,  taking  care  of  poultry,  etc.,  throughout 
the  year.  In  the  haying  season,  of  course,  we  hired  about  five  extra  men.  Now,  with  the 
employers'  liability  law  we  are  afraid  to  keep  hired  help,  for  should  some  accident  befall 
the  men,  for  which  we  were  absolutely  not  responsible,  we  would  be  held  liable.  Conse- 
quently, one  laborer  has  lost  a  good  steady  .job  and  good  home,  and  if  the  proposed 
eight-hour  law  goes  through  instead  of  hiring  the  extra  men  for  haying,  we  shall  exchange 
work  with  our  neighbors  who  formerly  hired  help  and  thus  among  five  or  six  farme  s 
do  all  our  own  work  as  best  we  can,  and  what  we  can't  do  we  shall  leave  undone,  which 
will  mean  the  loss  of  a  few  jobs  to  the  laborer.  If  the  co-operative  plan  is  not  practical, 
instead  of  hay,  grain,  and  fruit  we  will  raise  hogs  or  stock  that  requires  little  help  to 
manage.  Such  a  measure  would  be  absolutely  ruinous  to  the  orchardist  or  vineyardist 
who  is  dependent  on  help.  Formerly  when  we  kept  a  steady  man,  we  kept  the  lawn  cut 
and  orchard  plowed  and  ditches  cleaned  and  many  things  my  husband  has  to  neglect  now, 
but  we  feel  we  must  do  the  best  we  can  and  take  no  chance  of  some  employee  getting 
injured  and  paying  him  damages  which  we  are  not  able  to  afford.  Neither  can  we  afford 
to  carry  extra  insurance  for  some  other  man.  My  husband  carries  several  thousand  to 
protect  his  own  family,  but  why  should  a  small  land  owner  who  has  accumulated  a  little 

49 


enforced,  they  will  not  be  enforced.    Justices,  judges  and  juries  will  refuse 
to  find  facts  in  any  case  to  constitute  a  violation  of  the  law. 

The  Socialist  program  is  replete  with  the  idea  of  "the  people  rule." 
We  have  as  a  part  of  their  scheme  of  things  the  initiative,  referendum  and 
recall,  a  referendum  to  repeal  national  laws;  the  latter  to  be  amended  by 
"a  majority  of  voters  in  a  majority  of  States,"  etc.  The  nature  of  these 
proposals,  the  first  group  of  which  are  now  a  part  of  the  law  of  California 
as  of  many  other  States,  is  to  change  the  government  from  a  representative 
organization,  which  is  the  character  of  the  Commonwealth,  to  a  democracy 
into  which  we  have,  as  I  remarked,  largely  by  reason  of  these  provisions, 
been  degraded. 

We  have  seen  that  by  the  Socialist's  plan  "the  people,"  by  "direct 
action,"  are  made  the  real  determinators  of  the  legislation  that  exists  or 
which  may  be  brought  into  existence.  This  is  through  the  initiative  and 
referendum.  Another  order  of  plebiscite  is  upon  all  officials.  While  elected 
for  definite  terms,  they  are  subject  at  any  time  to  a  new  elective  contest 
before  the  voters  to  determine  whether  or  not  they  shall  remain  in  office, 
not  until  the  completion  of  their  respective  terms,  but  until  some  enemy 
circulates  another  petition  amongst  his  partisans  and  procures  the  necessary 
signatures  to  subject  him  to  a  further  contest  upon  the  same  question. 
These  provisions  have  been  adopted  in  many  States,  among  which  is  Cali- 
fornia, and  we  have  a  specimen  instance  of  the  operation  of  the  initiative 
in  the  proposed  eight-hour  measures  which  we  are  here  discussing.  Had 
the  initiative  not  existed  in  this  State^  these  proposals  would  not  have  been 
before  us.  They  never  would  have  been  presented  to  us  in  their  character 
of  bills.  Some  Socialist  legislature  might  have  enacted  them  into  law,  but 
Socialism  has  not  yet  developed,  even  in  this  State  with  its  Progressive 
administration,  to  the  length  of  legislative  adoption  of  such  offerings  as 
these,  and  before  that  day  should  have  arrived  it  might  be  hoped  that  the 
avenues  of  discussion  of  the  properness  of  such  policy  would  be  wider  open 
on  the  side  of  the  individualists  than  they  are  today.  All  of  these  devices 
are  predicated  upon  the  hypothesis  of  mistrust  by  the  people  of  the  persons 
whom,  they  elect  to  office.  It  is  assumed  that  legislaturemen  and  Judges 
and  others  may  be  tied  to  monetary  interests  in  conflict  with  the  welfare 
of  the  commonality;  and  these  provisions  are  not  only  to  place  in  the  latter 's 
hands  a  power  to  summarily  eject  them  from  office,  but  also  to  efface  their 


home  by  working  long  hours  and  saving  his  money  be  obliged  to  carry  insurance  to  protect 
some  man  who  has  had  the  same  chance  in  life  but  has  spent  his  money — perhaps  for 
whiskey.  If  the  laborer  wants  insurance  protection  let  him  take  out  his  own  insurance 
and  pay  for  it  like  a  decent  member  of  society  and  not  like  a  public  charge.  There  has 
been  enough  imposition  in  past  legislation  on  the  decent  citizen  who  has  tried  to  accumu- 
late without  enacting  this  ruinous  eight-hour  law.  They  can  argue  all  they  want  to  that 
we  should  hire  more  men  for  the  same  work.  We  cannot  afford  to  do  it  and  we  will  not 
do  it.  I  am  speaking  from  personal  knowledge.  Since  the  liability  law  passed,  among 
our  own  acquaintances,  I  know  eight  farmers  who  formerly  kept  a  steady  man  who  do 
not  keep  one  at  all  now.  If  a  canvass  were  taken  of  the  whole  State,  I  think  you  would 
find  thousands  who  have  managed  to  get  along  without  help  rather  than  take  the  extra 
risk.  With  an  eight-hour  law  there  will  be  tens  of  thousands.  Why  should  a  woman 
have  to  cook  for  three  or  four  men  instead  of  two  to  do  work  that  two  men  ought  to  do? 
The  farmer's  wife  will  have  to  work  harder  than  any  of  the  hired  help.  If  the  farm 
laborer  thinks  he  is  being  benefited  by  such  legislation  he  should  wake  up. — A  Woman 
Reader  in  Pacific  Rural  Press,  Aug.  9,  1914. 

50 


official  acts  and  to  effect,  by  a  different  means  from  any  action  of  theirs, 
achievements  which  they  might  not  be  willing  to  perform.  The  theory 
assumes  supreme  wisdom  on  part  of  "the  people,"  at  least  to  the  extent 
of  what  is,  and  what  is  not,  for  their  own  benefit.  It  is  the  experience  of 
ages,  however,  that  no  assumption  is  more  erroneous  than  this.  It  has  been 
tried  again  and  again  in  the  history  of  government,  has  always  produced 
its  disappointments  and  its  tyrannies,  and  has  come  down  to  us  in  this 
period  bearing  the  stamp  of  its  true  character,  demagoguery.  Mr.  A.  F. 
Morrison,  of  the  San  Francisco  bar,  in  an  interesting  brochure*  issued  by 
him  a  year  ago,  quite  the  same  as  I  am  putting  out  these  pamphlets,  refers 
us  to  Aristotle's  work  on  Politics,  in  which  this  greatest  of  the  Grecian 
thinkers  comments  upon  these  references  of  government  to  the  multitude, 
and  shows  their  working  out,  just  as  we  are  experiencing  them  wherever  in 
the  United  States  they  exist.  Aristotle  says : 

"Another  kind  of  democracy  is  where,  other  things  being  the  same, 
the  multiude,  and  not  the  law,  bears  away.  This  comes  to  pass  when, 
instead  of  the  law,  the  mere  resolves  of!  the  popular  assembly  are  sovereign ; 
and  this  is  the  work  of  the  demagogues ;  for  popular  governments,  in  which 
the  constitution  and  laws  are  supreme,  afford  no  place  for  demagogues,  but 
the  best  citizens  are  there  in  authority.  Where,  however,  the  laws  are  not 
sovereign,  demagogues  spring  up.  In  such  a  government  the  people  are 
a  sort  of  many-headed  monarch;  for  the  many  rule  not  as  each,  but  as  all. 
Whether  Homer  had  in  mind  this  kind  of  government,  when  he  censures 
a  plurality  of  rulers,  or  whether  he  meant  that  in  which  many  individuals 
bear  sway,  is  not  clear.  Now,  such  a  people  being  in  truth  a  monarch,  will, 
of  course,  play  the  kind ;  and  inasmuch  as  it  is  controlled  by  no  law  readily 
becomes  despotic.  A  democracy  of  this  description  bears  tlie  same  analogy 
to  a  popular  government,  based  upon  the  supremacy  of  law,  that  a  tyranny 
bears  to  the  legitimate  forms  of  monarchy.  In  both  the  animus,  or  moral 
character,  is  the  same;  both  exercise  despotism  over  the  better  class  of 
citizens ;  and  the  resolves  of  mass  meetings  are,  in  the  one,  what  edicts  and 
decrees  are  in  the  other.  The  demagogue  too,  and  the  flatterer  of  the  tyrant, 
bear  the  closest  analogy;  they  are,  indeed,  at  heart,  the  same;  and  these 
have  the  principal  power;  each  in  their  respective  forms  of  government, 
court  favorites  with  the  absolute  monarch  and  demagogues  wTith  a  people 
such  as  I  have  described.  The  demagogues  are,  in  fact,  the  guilty  authors 
of  this  degeneracy  of  popular  government,  by  referring  everything  to  the 
mere  pleasure  of  the  people,  without  respect  to  law  or  right.  Thus  they 
aggrandize  themselves,  and  become  mighty ;  by  ruling  the  popular  opinion, 
they  rule  the  State;  for  the  multitude  obeys  them!  If  they  wish  to  over- 
throw an  upright  magistrate,  they  accuse  him  not  before  the  law,  but  before 
the  people,  which,  they  say,  ought  to  be  his  judge ;  the  people,  well  pleased, 
entertain  the  wrongful  proposal,  and  thus  all  just  authority  is  dissolved! 
He  who  should  blame  us  for  calling  such  a  democracy  a  State,  would, 
certainly,  not  censure  without  good  reason;  for  where  laws  do  not  govern 
there  is  no  state." 

It  is  through  the  instrumentality  of  these  speciosities,  that  the  govern- 
ment of  the  country  has  largely  passed  from  the  character  of  the  Common- 
wealth into  the  region  of  the  democracy,  and  is  now  on  the  high  road  to 


""The  Recall  of  Judges." 

51 


that  absolutism  which  demagoguery  always  evolves.  By  the  processes  which 
these  injections  of  the  mass  into  the  affairs  of  the  State,  other  than  by  the 
selection  of  representatives,  always  induce,  we  find  here  in  California  that 
government  has  already  gotten  beyond  the  grasp  of  the  proletariat  who  is 
assumed  to  control  it.  We  have  the  spectacle  of  "direct  action"  in  primary 
elections  converting  multitudes  of  people  into  politicians,  besieging  citizens 
for  signatures  to  petitions  to  get  upon  the  official  tickets,  these  tickets 
sometimes  so  vast  that  they  comprise  scores  of  names,  this  machinery 
planned  upon  the  principle  that  the  group  of  public  offices  comprise  a  sort 
of  a  pap  barrel,  into  which  every  hungry  scrofa  might  struggle  to  get  his 
snout.  This  order  of  politics  may  seem  to  us  a  mere  scramble  for  offices; 
but  to  the  student  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  nations  in  the  world's  history  it  is 
a  well  recognized  and  significant  phenomenon;  it  is  a  symptom  of  political 
disorganization  and  national  decline,  and  was  presented  at  the  close  of  the 
Roman  Republic,  when,  as  Mommsen  says,  demagoguery  so  flourished  that 
' '  it  became  quite  a  trade. "  "  The  Roman  commonwealth, ' '  he  says,  ' '  exhib- 
ited political  disorganization,  with  an  unenviable  clearness." 

Another  phase  of  direct  action  is  that  in  which  the  voter  is  told  that 
it  has  become  his  duty  to  the  State  to  read,  meditate  and  decide  upon  the 
advisability  of  adopting  a  considerable  tome  of  legislative  proposals  which 
the  elected  statesmen,  erstwhile  charged  with  the  duty  of  determining  the 
wisdom  of  such  measures,  have  passed  on  to  him  for  his  selection.  Obviously 
the  citizen  is  not  qualified  to  do  this  work.  The  few  who  have  the  learning 
to  pass  upon  the  desirability  of  the  several  bills  as  laws,  rarely  have  the 
time  to  devote  to  the  work,  and  the  most  scrutinizing  refrain  from  passing 
judgment  on  measures  upon  which  they  have  heard  no  adequate  debate. 
The  vast  multitude  do  not  read  the  provisions.  They  vote  yes  or  no 
according  to  the  confidence  they  hold  in  the  ruling  power,  the  head  of  the 
administration  of  the  State.  That  which  he  programs  and  advises  will  be 
carried  into  effect;  presently  their  votes  will  not  be  necessary  save  in  the 
most  nominal  way,  wholly  ineffective  to  stay  any  cause  against  the  ruler's 
will.  Such  transpires  by  what  may  seem  to  be  perfectly  natural  processes.* 
We  see  it  now  working  in  the  Socialist  calls  for  the  "short  ballot."  This 
is  not  other  than  the  vesting  in  the  hands  of  the  head  of  the  State  the 
power  of  appointment  of  officials  who  under  the  representative  system  were 
elective,  were  chosen  by  the  people.  The  demand  grows  out  of  the  multi- 
tudinous mass  of  names  which  go  upon  the  official  tickets  under  a  system 
presumed  to  be  based  upon  equality  of  opportunity  and  letting  the  people, 
as  distinguished  from  a  nominating  convention  under  the  Commonwealth, 
choose  the  candidates  for  office.  The  plan  is  to  curtail  the  elective  offices 
on  whose  candidates  the  people  must  pass,  thereby  shorten  the  ballot ;  the 


""Caesar's  acts  were  unconstitutional !     Yes  ;  but  Constitutions  were  made  for  men,  rot 
men   for   Constitutions,   and   Cicero   had   long   seen   that   the   Constitution   was  at   an   end. 
Froude's  Caesar,  p.    376.      This   is  precisely   the   talk  we   now  hear   going  on   all   over   the 
United  States  concerning  the  American  Constitution. 

52 


result,  the  head  of  the  government  acquires  a  new  power  to  fill  the  offices 
with  his  partisans  and  place  the  groundwork  for  a  new  political  aristocracy. 

Indeed  one  could  not  conceive  of  a  more  effectively  arranged  scheme 
for  installing  a  national  absolutism  than  that  devised  by  the  Socialist 
platform.  About  everybody  working  for  the  government  in  a  salaried  job, 
the  government  centered  in  a  single  chamber  which  holds  all  powers,  these 
exercised  by  a  ruling  faction,  topped  by  the  presiding  officer  of  this  assem- 
bly, the  only  check  on  the  operations  of  this  monarch  being  "the  people" 
whom  he  employs!  Let  any  subject  under  such  a  regime  dare  vote  against 
his  proposals,  and  very  short  shrift  would  be  made  of  him  when  the  govern- 
ment detectives  should  have  spied  him  out. 

We  may  observe  how  these  influences  are  working  out  in  the  direction 
in  which  they  have  thus  far  found  practical  expression,  namely  the  Pro- 
gressive party.  This  movement  has  been  taken  from  the  Socialists,  and  in 
certain  States,  California  among  them,  has  installed  the  initiative,  refer- 
endum and  recall,  which  is  an  overcoming  of  the  system  of  representative 
government.  What  has  been  the  results  of  this  innovation?  It  manifests 
itself  as  a  strong  centralizing  movement,  converging  the  power  of  the  State 
into  single  hands,  as  note  its  effects  in  Oregon,  where  it  has  made  a  State 
boss  of  Mr.  W.  S.  U'Ren,  in  California's  experiences  with  Governor  John- 
son, and  Wisconsin's  with  Governor  La  Follette.  Charles  M.  Hollings- 
worth,  after  a  careful  tracing  and  analysis  of  this  movement,  correctly 
concludes  as  follows : 

' i  What  the  '  progressive '  reform  movement  really  does  is  to  provide  ways 
and  means  by  which  a  majority  of  the  electorate  may  commission  one  man, 
who  promises  them  betterment  of  their  condition,  with  plenary,  unrestricted 
powers  to  undertake  to  carry  out  the  promise,  generally  by  voting  him  into 
a  leading  executive  position ;  and  this  with  the  implied  understanding  that 
he  is  personally  to  direct  and  control  the  legislative,  and  at  need  the  judicial 
functions,  as  well  as  exercise  the  executive  functions  of  government  in 
achieving  the  desired  end.  The  movement  is  a  first  step  towards  personal 
absolutism.  It  is  to  be  considered  as  a  first  step  only  because  the  commis- 
sion given  the  individual  is  only  for  a  limited  period  of  time.  The  second 
and  fully-consummating  step  will  be  taken  when  the  commission  is  made 
perpetual. ": 

It  may  be  safely  predicted  that  the  Progressive  party  will  not  overcome 
the  Socialist  party  nor  stop  its  growth.  If  either  of  the  two  is  to  pass 
away  the  disappearing  one  will  be  the  Progressive  and  not  the  Socialist 
party.  The  real  quality  and  character  of  the  Progressive  party,  and  for 
which  it  stands,  is  the  absorption  by  the  State  of  the  values  and  heart  of 
business,  while  permitting  the  shell  to  remain  in  the  hands  of  its  owners. 
In  other  words  to  "govern,"  "regulate"  and  control  it  through  commis- 
sions, while  its  operation  is  proceeded  with  by  its  proprietors,  who  are 
permitted  to  earn  through  such  operations  just  sufficient,  in  salaries  and 
interest  on  invested  capital,  with  profits  carefully  eliminated,  to  hold  them 


*The  So-called  Progressive  Movement;  Annals  of  the  Americna  Academy  of  Political 
and  Social  Science,  September,  1912. 

53 


to  the  work  they  are  performing.  As  between  this  method  and  that  of  the 
Socialists  who  take  outright  the  business  from  its  owners,  paying  them  for 
that  which  the  State  condemns,  the  latter  is  by  far  the  more  honest  and 
commendable,  and  it  is  that  condition  into  which  the  other  will  inevitably 
tend ;  for  neither  the  public  nor  the  businesses  will  be  satisfied  with  matters 
being  run  on  the  Progressive  lines.  At  that  time,  if  not  before,  the 
Socialists  and  Progressives  will  get  together,  and  this  union  will  be  as  the 
junction  of  Wellington  and  Blucher  in  the  Waterloo  of  the  Constitution. 

But  after  we  have  said  all  this  against  the  Socialists  and  their  move- 
ment, does  it  not  remain  a  fact  that  the  laboring  people  do  not  participate 
to  the  extent  that  it  is  fair  and  just  that  they  should  in  the  comforts  and 
benefits  which  civilization  has  brought  forth?  Is  it  not  true  that  the  few 
acquire  wealth,  while  many  are  denied  necessities?  And  is  there  not 
some  arrangement  possible  under  civilization  whereby  men  who  wish 
dmployment  can  always  get  it,  and  at  wages  which  would  maintain  them 
and  their  families  upon  a  plane  in  which  they  could  partake  in  a 
moderate  degree  of  these  benefits?  I  reply,  assuredly  there  is,  and  of 
one  fact  we  may  be  certain,  that  is :  there  is  need  in  the  commuity  for  the 
services  of  every  human  being  that  exists,  and  of  all  appliances,  attributes 
and  potentialities  which  he  can  now  bring,  or  ever  bring,  to  bear  in  his 
task  of  serving  his  fellow.  The  wants  of  man  are  never  gratified  and  can 
never  be  gratified.  Appease  them  today,  tomorrow  imagination  has  already 
created  new  fields  of  fantasy  and  need.  And  all  men  wish  after  some 
fashion  or  order  of  taste  or  adaptability,  to  serve  their  fellows.  What  then 
is  this  clog  interposed  between  men  who  wrant  service  and  those  who  wish 
to  serve,  that  impairs  and  in  large  measure  prevents  this  mutual  rendition  ? 
Into  this  we  shall  in  some  degree  inquire.  For  the  present  let  me  remark 
that  it  must  not  be  taken  that  all  this  great  labor  movement,  with  its  many 
proposals  for  changes  in  laws  and  systems,  with  a  large  number  of  those 
changes  already  having  been  effected — that  this  is  altogether  unworthy  and 
harmful,  and  the  entire  should  be  denounced.  It  was  but  natural  that  with 
the  rise  of  the  light  of  civilization  over  the  world,  the  great  mass  of  the 
laboring  people  should  be  awakened  also,  and  should  reach  out  their  hands 
in  the  direction  of  that  light  and  try  to  partake  of  it ;  and  that  they  would 
proceed  to  the  getting  of  it  in  what  seemed  to  them  the  most  direct  and 
immediate  way  they  could  reach  it.  The  cry  which  has  gone  up  from  them 
is  a  wail  of  complaint,  of  protest ;  a  struggle  to  move  forward ;  a  lifting  up 
of  their  wounds  and  oppressions  and  showing  them  to  the  world,  and 
bringing  forward  their  massed  power  to  halt  the  world  to  notice  them. 
They  have,  indeed,  achieved  great  results.  Industry  is  now  run  under 
conditions  more  sanitary,  more  free  from  discomfort  and  injury  than  here- 
tofore; factory  conditions  are  described  in  many  quarters  as  "ideal";  we 
hear  employers  saying  that  their  employees  "must  be  treated  like  men," 
and  there  is  a  more  scrupulous  regard  for  justice  existing  now  than  in  the 

54 


past  between  those  who  in  the  law  are  known  as  masters,  and  those  who 
are  known  as  servants. 

* 

But  upon  the  whole  the  labor  movement  has  been  economically  wrong, 
and  it  can  never  attain  to  its  real  benefit  by  pursuing  the  lines  upon  which 
it  has  been  and  is  now  proceeding.  A  few  members  comprising  the  heart 
of  the  labor  unions,  who  by  reason  of  the  power  of  the  unions  receive  high, 
even  exorbitant  wages,  feel  that  they  benefit  by  the  condition,  but  in  truth 
they  do  not;  while  a  vast  aggregate  suffers  through  intermittent  work,  or 
no  work  at  all,  and  the  constricting  processes  proceeding  in  industry  ever 
tend  to  lessen  the  number  of  the  employed  and  to  increase  the  million  of 
the  unemployed. 

And  the  reason  is  that  labor,  in  trying  to  work  its  way  out  of  its 
difficulties,  has  been  going  in  the  wrong  direction,  albeit  that  direction  has 
seemed  to  be  the  one  promising  the  most  immediate  returns.  Economics, 
indeed,  possess  that  peculiarity.  As  in  the  realm  of  ethics,  its  true  effects 
are  not  the  immediate  ones.  It  shall  seem  to  prosper  me  if  I  take  for  my 
use  my  neighbor 's  coin ;  but  in  truth  I  have  not  helped  myself,  though  with 
it  I  have  bought,  and  have  eaten,  the  good  things  I  desired;  for  I  have 
deprived  him  of  his  ability  to  accept  and  pay  for  my  services  which  he 
needs;  and  I  have  filled  him  with  hatred  towards  me,  which  makes  it 
impossible  that  he  shall  be  of  further  assistance  to  me.  So  in  ;this  field  of 
labor  we  see  that  higher  than  economic  wages  drive  up  the  price  of  the 
commodity  which  the  laborer  must  buy  with  his  wages,  and  which  com- 
modity he  receives,  therefore,  comprises  his  real  wages.  Economic  wages 
may  be  defined  as  that  share  of  the  product  which  goes  to  the  labor  put 
upon  it.  It  is  the  "forty  per  cent  of  the  catch"  in  the  halibut  fisheries  of 
which  we  have  spoken.  The  price  of  the  product,  hence  the  nominal  share 
of  the  laborer,  is  determined  by  competition  in  the  commodity  market, 
which  prevents  an  excess  of  profits,  as  I  explained  in  my  Japan  pamphlet. 
The  laborer  can,  as  I  have  said,  never  get  more  than  the  share  of  labor, 
and  this  will  be  paid  him  freely,  provided  the  door  of  opportunity  to 
labor  be  kept  open.  And  singularly  enough,  in  this  incident,  the  laborer 
himself  has  been  one  of  the  strongest  influences  in  closing  this  door,  his  act 
being,  of  course,  of  the  purblind  order. 

The  "door  of  opportunity"  comprises  several  components.  I  have 
noted  them  all  in  my  Japan  pamphlet,  to  which  the  reader  is  referred.  It 
consists  first  of  initiative,  second  of  immigration,  and  third  of  land.  Initia- 
tive or  incentive  may  be  said  to  be  that  quality  in  the  human  which  moves 
him  to  progress;  which  stirs  him  to  new  enterprise;  which  prompts  him  to 
take  industrial  risks;  to  venture  forth.  It  is  a  psychological  quality  and 
may  be  readily  discouraged  and  suppressed  by  restrictive  laws  and  condi- 
tions that  limit  opportunity.  It  is  a  fact  that  the  whole  course  of  the 
Socialist  labor  movement  has  been  antagonistic  to  initiative.  It  has  been 
directed  to  taking  profit  out  of  industry,  reducing  returns  at  that  end  of 

55 


enterprise  which  works  with  capital  to  mere  interest  upon  investment  and 
wages  for  personal  services.  Accumulated  capital  has  been  further  assailed 
by  various  forms  of  taxes;  by  death  dues,  and  super  income  taxes  which 
have  no  other  justification  for  existing  than  to  punish  men  for  accumulating 
wealth.  Profit  is  the  fund  which  is  the  basis  of  initiative.  Essentially  it  is 
a  fund  which  may  be  lost  or  won  in  business.  An  enterprise  may  have  no 
profits,  not  even  salary  for  those  who  initiate  it,  and  often  capital  itself 
is  lost.  Profits  in  one  business,  therefore,  become  capital  in  another;  and 
where  the  State  operates  to  repress  profits  it  wars  on  business,  and  destroys 
incentive.  Men  should  be  left  to  make  all  the  profit  in  business  that  they 
can ;  it  is  the  lure  that  spurs  them  on  to  higher  and  better  endeavors.  It  is 
assumed  that  when  a  man  is  a  millionaire  he  has  taken  a  million  away  from 
some  number  of  people,  and  that  it  is  withdrawn  in  some  fashion  from  the 
common  stock  of  the  country;  that  people  are  injured  by  his  having  it. 
This  is  not  a  fact,  for,  as  I  pointed  out  in  my  "National  Tendency" 
pamphlet,  all  the  millionaire  can  get  out  of  his  possessions  is  what  he 
and  his  family  eat,  wear  and  use;  and  these  uses  are  susceptible  of  only  a 
very  limited  application  of  wealth.  The  volume  of  his  fortune  is  in 
industry,  operating  under  directive  control,  and  creating  in  thousands  of 
channels  opportunity  to  labor.  This  quality  of  initiative,  by  removing  the 
spur  of  profit,  of  individual  accumulation,  Socialism  would  practically 
extinguish  within  the  nation,  and  thereupon  would  be  delivered  a  fatal 
blow  to  civilization,  for  it  is  upon  incentive  that  civilization  is  built. 
Socialists  answer  this  criticism  of  their  program  by  asserting  that  there  is 
nothing  in  Socialism  incompatible  with  the  offering  of  any  special  reward 
for  special  social  service.  We  need  go  no  further.  The  incentive  which 
moves  a  nation  cannot  be  built  upon  government  offering  rewards.  Incen- 
tive must  abound  on  every  hand ;  men  must  be  free  to  create  opportunities 
out  of  the  very  atmosphere  of  conditions.  The  fullest  liberty,  the  most  com- 
plete individualism,  is  necessary  for  its  healthy  existence.  Aside  from 
this  statement  we  are  told  that  the  incentives  remaining  under  Socialism 
will  be  "joy  of  work;"  "satisfaction  of  having  wron  where  others  failed;" 
"the  instinct  and  passion  for  creation,  discovery  and  self  expression;" 
* '  symbols  of  honor ; ' '  and  notes  that  ' '  our  great  manufacturing  plants  have 
their  own  departments  of  inventors,"  as  though  inventive  genius  were  a 
matter  of  clerk  hire.  The  reply  to  all  of  this  is  that  invention  is  not  the 
only  field  of  initiative ;  initiative  must  abound,  and  must  have  all  the  prizes 
that  freedom  may  give  to  bring  it  forward  in  its  full  force  and  effect. 

It  is  to  the  interest  of  labor  further  to  keep  open  the  door  of  immigra- 
tion of  all  laboring  peoples,  a  matter  which  I  have  also  discussed  in  my 
"Japan"  pamphlet,  and  which  I  have  repeatedly  emphasized  with  reference 
to  our  intercourse  on  this  Coast  with  the  peoples  of  the  Orient.  The 
foreign  laborer  by  joining  in  industry  creates  products  which  call  for 
other  labor  and  thus  provides  and  promotes  opportunity.  The  laborers 

56 


can  do  nothing  more  harmful  to  their  own  interests  than  by  pursuing  their 
policy  of  opposing  immigration  upon  the  theory  that  a  laborer  coming  into 
the  country  takes  the  job  away  from  a  workman  here.  He  does  nothing 
of  the  kind.  The  immigrant  furnishes  jobs,  which  but  for  his  labor  would 
not  exist.  He  raises  wages  and  dees  not  lower  them;  he  does  not  derogate 
or  repress  the  native  laborer,  but  he  drives  him  to  a  higher  status  and 
makes  life  easier  and  more  abundant  to  him. 

The  third  feature  is  land ;  and  this  is  a  matter  of  extreme  importance. 
Where,  indeed,  the  Socialist  demands  present  any  aspect  of  a  real  wrong 
as  their  basis,  it  is  our  duty  to  recognize  it  and  show  it  forth.  We  cannot 
overcome  Socialism  by  ignoring  or  defending  the  errors  in  our  polity  and 
systems  which  have  brought  it  about;  and  none  can  deny  that  in  our  field 
of  production  and  distribution,  hence  in  our  civilization,  there  is  "some- 
thing wrong"  which  has  given  Socialism  and  labor  unionism  a  real  status 
as  a  criticism.  We  have  noted  that  the  Socialist  platform  calls  for 
"collective  ownership  of  land  where  practicable,  where  impracticable  the 
appropriation  and  collection  of  all  rentals  held  for  speculation  and  exploita- 
tion. "  This  proposal  is  impracticable  and  unjust,  though  perhaps  just  as 
reasonable  as  many  of  the  others  which  the  Socialist  designs.  There  is  no 
question  that  the  existing  land  system  is  one  of  the  large  reasons  for  the 
untoward  industrial  conditions  which  prevail  today,  in  that  the  owner  of 
land  at  present  absorbs  a  value  for  which  he  gives  no  service,  which  is 
deposited  upon  the  land  by  society,  and  which  is  appropriated  from  labor. 
Let  me  illustrate :  The  Colorado  Eiver  runs  through  a  vast  tract  of  desert 
and  unoccupied  land.  It  is  a  muddy  reddish  stream,  carrying  at  all 
seasons  large  quantities  of  water,  winding  its  way  through  low  banks  and 
an  open  country  of  gently  sloping  plains.  The  only  vegetation  this  land 
will  grow  is  the  cacti,  a  few  weeds  of  the  gummy  and  sticky  sort,  here  and 
there  a  spear  of  some  tough  grass,  and  sage  brush.  It  may  be  said  to  be  a 
raw  product  oi-  nature,  a  bare  area  of  the  surface  of  the  planet,  fitting 
complement  to  the  arid  sky  which  bends  above  it.  When  I  rode  over  those 
mesas  twenty  years  ago  I  was  told  that  this  land  could  be  bought  for  five 
dollars  per  acre,  but  that  anyone  who  would  pay  five  dollars  for  it  would, 
in  the  common  estimate  of  the  country,  be  "a  fool,"  for  it  would  graze 
neither  cattle  nor  sheep.  A  few  years  later  some  genius  came  along  and 
conceived  the  idea  that  if  he  should  go  up  stream,  put  a  pipe  in  the  river, 
crook  the  end  of  the  pipe  and  lift  it  over  the  top  of  the  bank  on  to  the 
mesa,  carry  the  free  end  down  along  the  plain  for  a  mile  or  two  until  the 
latter  became  lower  than  the  end  in  the  river,  water  could  be  made  to  flow 
and  it  would  keep  on  flowing  through  the  pipe;  in  other  words,  he  con- 
structed a  siphon ;  and  the  application  of  this  contrivance  put  the  lands  of 
the  desert  under  irrigation.  It  was  found  that  when  the  lands  were  vitalized 
by  the  waters  they  would  yield  prodigious  crops,  and  as  soon  as  this  was 
discovered,  people  to  cultivate  the  land  began  to  pour  into  the  country. 

57 


Much  of  the  land  was  owned  in  Yuma  and  Needles,  and  the  proprietors 
who  possessed  these  acreages  suddenly  found  themselves  possessed  of  large 
wealth,  for  the  lands  had  risen  in  value  from  $5  per  acre  to  $75  per  acre, 
to  $100  and  even  $150  per  acre ;  and  a  client  who  called  upon  me  recently 
stated  that  there  was  no  more  opportunity  in  that  country,  that  the  land 
owners  down  there  were  charging  $30  per  acre  per  year  rent,  besides  cost 
of  water,  to  grow  cotton  upon  the  land,  and  people  were  now  moving  out. 
Here  then  there  was  accreted  upon  the  land  a  large  value  the  income 
of  which  the  land  owner  was  collecting.  The  amount  he  was  receiving  was 
not  set  by  himself,  it  grew  upon  competition  of  the  laborers  applying  to 
him  for  access  to  the  land.  The  more  they  would  yield  the  higher  he  would 
raise  the  price,  the  condition  being  not  unlike  that  of  the  bid  and  ask  on 
the  stock  exchange.  Occasional  sales  or  rentals  would  occur,  but  for  the 
most  part  the  land  owner  could  not  be  satisfied  and  the  land  in  wide  areas 
was  held  idle.  The  bidders  would  give  to  him  as  much  of  the  product  of 
the  land  or  its  value  as  would  allow  them  to  retain  from  it  a  living  and 
a  little  more;  and  where  land  was  sold  outright  this  yield  was  in  some 
rough  way  capitalized  as  the  price  per  acre.  The  status  of  this  owner  in 
the  business  is  an  interesting  inquiry.  He  did  not  make  the  land  nor  did 
he  succeed  to  the  right  of  any  maker.  He  did  not  make  the  water;  it  was 
flowing  idly  along  its  bed  to  the  Gulf  of  California.  He  did  not  even  own 
the  pipe,  conceive  the  idea  of  its  utility,  or  dig  any  of  the  ditches  that 
carried  the  waters  over  the  lands.  What  did  he  do?  He  held  a  paper 
under  the  authority  of  the  State,  that  said  he  had  a  right  to  forbid  the 
use  of  this  space  of  the  earth  by  labor;  this  gave  him  the  right  to  admit 
labor  to  it  upon  his  terms,  and  he  took  the  most  that  the  applicant  could 
be  moved  to  give.  Obviously  here  is  a  factor  who  is  out  of  place.  All 
men  have  an  equal  and  natural  right  to  the  use  of  the  earth.  Such  is  one 
of  those  inherent  and  inalienable  rights  which  the  Constitution  asserts.  He 
can  never  barter  it  away.  When  he  entered  the  world  he  acquired  a  right 
to  live ;  no  one  could  rightfully  kill  him.  His  living  imported  the  free  use 
of  three  things,  viz. :  the  use  of  sufficient  of  the  air  to  breathe ;  no  man  has 
a  right  to  bottle  up  his  atmosphere  and  sell  it  to  him  at  so  much  per  cubic 
foot  for  breathing  purposes.  He  had  a  right  to  sufficient  of  sunshine  to 
afford  ,him  light  and  warmth;  none  has  a  right  to  surround  him  with 
effects  which  shut  him  from  the  sun,  and  sell  him  sunlight  by  the  kilowatt 
hour.  He  had  a  right  to  sufficient  of  the  earth  from  which  to  draw  his 
sustenance,  and  no  one  has  a  right  to  deny  him  the  use  of  ample  of  this 
element  from  which  to  sustain  his  life,  or  to  interpose  between  the  man 
and  the  soil  and  say  he  shall  exist  upon  it  only  by  sufferance  and 
the  payment  of  a  charge.  These  elements  are  fundamental  to  his 
very  existence  and  to  ignore  either  of  them  is  to  strike  at  the 
very  root  of  his  liberties.  A  society  which  does  not  regard  them  will  as  a 
consequence  display  multifarious  phenomena  of  social  disturbance. 

58 


The  fund  which  the  land  lord  receives  is  the  fund  which  is  apportioned 
to  land,  and  which  the  laborer  upon  the  land  is  willing  to  pay;  otherwise 
the  latter  would  not  occupy  the  land,  but  would  leave  it.  The  net  injury 
to  the  occupant  in  the  operation  is  that  after  having  paid  up  to  the  limit 
to  the  land  owner,  a  much  higher  rent  than  he  should  rightfully  pay,  the 
tax  collector  heaves  in  sight  and  collects  from  him  for  support  of 
the  State,  levying  his  charges  upon  the  products  of  his  labor.  And 
the  fund  so  withdrawn  is  no  trifling  matter,  it  is  a  large,  a  vast 
amount.  Consider  the  enormous  sums  which  are  yearly  paid  the  State  upon 
improvements,  personal  property,  licenses,  income  tax,  tariff  and  internal 
revenue,  taxes  upon  estates  of  decedents,  taxes  upon  immigrants,  every 
vestige  of  which,  save  where  they  bear  upon  the  value  of  land,  are  erroneous, 
unjustifiable,  in  the  teeth  of  the  principles  of  the  Constitution,  and  should 
be  swept  away.  Aside  from  the  oppression  of  a  double  taxation,  the  excess 
of  which  must  be  added  to  the  cost  of  the  product,  hence  increases  its  price, 
the  laborer — for  every  man  who  works  with  his  hands  or  with  his  mind  is 
a  laborer — is  injured  by  the  holding  by  the  land  owner  of  land  out  of  use, 
whereby  labor  fails  of  employment,  initiative  is  impaired,  and  production 
is  held  down;  while  as  I  remark,  rent  is  driven  up  greatly  higher  than  it 
should  be,  an  excess  which  really  does  the  land  owner  no  good,  for  if  this 
condition  were  cured  he  would  get  less  rent,  but  with  the  money  he  received 
he  could  buy  vastly  more  than  at  present,  for  prices  then  would  be  low 
instead  of  high,  as  is  the  case  under  the  existing  system.  A  system,  there- 
fore, which  places  in  the  hands  of  one  man  a  swor<J  wherewith  to  drive  back 
labor  from  vacant  areas  of  the  common  earth,  is  not  such  as  can  find  any 
support  under  a  rational  interpretation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  It  is  true  that  under  the  Constitution  the  assertion  of  this  right 
has  been  neglected;  it  was  not  indeed  recognized  in  this  age  until  it  was 
pointed  out  by  Henry  George  and  is  not  commonly  conceded  now;  but  we 
have  seen  the  vast  and  rapid  progress  Socialism  has  made,  the  menacing 
proportions  it  presents  at  the  present  day,  and  we  realize  that  its  excuse 
for  being  is  that  men  are  denied  livings  and  that  in  justice  they  should  have 
a  larger  scope  of  opportunity  than  they  now  possess,  and  here  we  find 
ensconced  at  the  roots  of  monopoly  the  land  owner  possessed  of  a  power 
given  him  by  the  law,  to  keep  men  off  of  the  natural  earth,  and  to  prevent 
the  great  basic  storehouse  of  nature  from  receiving  the  embrace  of 
labor  in  the  bringing  forth  of  wealth  for  the  service  of  man.  Very 
clearly  the  value  which  accreted  to  those  Colorado  lands  belonged 
to  the  people  who  created  it.  It  did  not  belong  to  the  man  in 
Yuma.  Land  value  is  essentially  a  social  creation.  It  cannot  arise  nor 
exist  except  through  society.  It  belongs  absolutely  to  the  State  and,  from 
the  standpoint  of  ownership,  the  Socialists  are  completely  right  when  they 
demand  that  the  State  shall  take  every  vestige  of  it,  a  demand,  however, 
that  is  impossible  of  being  effective.  There  are  in  fact  two  forms  of  value ; 
social  value  and  individualistic  value.  Social  value  is  land  value,  while 

59 


individualistic  value  is  all  other  values  that  exist.  As  between  these  t\>o 
the  social  is  immensely  greater  than  all  other  values.  Take  San  Francisco 
for  instance.  The  assessed  value  of  land  in  the  city  and  county  of  San 
Francisco  is  $304,579,974.  That  of  improvements,  $165,394,837.  Personal 
property,  $71,816,672.  Improvements  and  personal  property  together, 
$237,211,509;  and  these  values  may  be  taken  as  an  index  of  such  values 
throughout  the  country,  and  relatively  so  in  other  countries.  In  Vancouver, 
for  instance,  land  value  (real  estate)  is  $150,456,660.  Improvements  are 
$76,199,743.  Much  of  that  which  is  assessed  as  personal  property  is  not 
value  at  all,  but  tokens,  mere  representatives  of  value  existing  elsewhere, 
as  stocks,  bonds,  bills,  notes,  solvent  credits,  non-metallic  money,  etc.  Value 
abides  only  in  things,  not  in  evidences  of  things,  or  in  promises,  beliefs, 
hopes  and  aspirations;  and  land  values  are  things,  intangible  though  they 
be,  and  the  buildings  upon  them  and  their  contents  or  those  objects  which 
are  otherwise  upon,  or  that  which  is  within  the  land,  is  and  are  all  things. 
The  trouble  with  our  economic  scholasticists  which  causes  them  to  embrace 
Socialism,  is  that  they  do  not  give  thought  to  this  enormous  fund  of  land 
value,  to  analyze  it,  to  consider  its  existence  and  to  regard  its  relation  to 
government  and  to  the  economic  life  of  society.  Painfully  enough,  this 
school  has  been  generally  antagonistic  to  considering  it  at  all,  have  denied 
that  it  should  be  utilized  by  society,  that  society  has  any  right  to  its 
possession,  or  that  if  treated  as  a  social  fund,  and  labor  and  its  effects  were 
thereby  relieved  from  taxation,  the  change  would  make  any  particular 
difference.  Nevertheless  land  value  is  the  natural  fund  provided  by  the 
operations  of  God  for  the  support  of  society  in  its  public  aspects;  and  like 
all  of  God's  gifts  to  man  it  is  abundant,  it  is  bounteous.  It  rises  in  extent 
just  as  civilization  rises,  just  as  the  public  social  necessities  of  man  through 
the  presence  of  civilization  increase  and  multiply.  Today  it  is  with  us,  in  a 
rough  way,  about  $1000  per  head  of  population ;  one  hundred  years  ago,  it 
was  far  less  than  this ;  a  century  hence  it  may  be  $2000  per  head  of  popula- 
tion. The  site  of  San  Francisco  today  has  a  value  of  $304,579,974 — and  this 
is  its  taxable  value,  the  true  or  selling  value  is  far  greater  than  this,  perhaps 
half  again  as  great.  But  let  us  stampede  the  inhabitants  of  San  Francisco 
like  a  lot  of  wild  horses  and  they  gallop  off,  or  we  flush  them  as  a  flock  of 
birds  and  they  fly  away,  and  all  the  buildings  and  else,  by  some  magic  of 
apports  dissolve  into  fluidic  atoms  and  go  with  them ;  and  in  their  place  we 
bring  in  400,000  naked  and  savage  Hottentots  with  their  huts  on  poles, 
thatched  with  grass  or  turf.  Can  you  tell  me  what  the  value  of  the  site  of 
San  Francisco  would  be  with  such  a  population?  For  what  hat  full  of 
beads,  package  of  tobacco,  or  two-bit  Waterbury  alarm  clock  with  its  buzzing 
bell,  could  we  then  buy  the  site  of  the  Crocker  National  Bank!  Very 
obviously  whatever  value  the  land  of  San  Francisco  would  then  have  would 
not  be  due  to  the  population  upon  it,  but  to  the  presence  of  the  civilization 
of  today  upon  adjacent  areas,  and  to  the  prospects  of  routing  the  Hotten-: 
tots,  and  restoring  the  land  to  the  people  who  had  left  it. 

60 


The  perfecting  of  an  arrangement  whereby  these  values  upon  the  lands 
of  the  Colorado  could  go  to  the  occupants  of  the  lands,  that  is,  to  the  State 
as  their  agent,  at  the  same  time  the  unused  lands  be  kept  open  for  settlement 
at  their  original  values,  is  a  mere  scheme  of  taxation  into  which  I  will  not 
go  in  this  paper ;  suffice  it  to  say  that  had  such  a  method  been  in  vogue  on 
the  banks  of  the  river,  people  would  not  have  ceased  moving  into  the 
country  until  every  acre  of  the  land  was  occupied;  there  would  have  been 
no  one  coming  out  and  proceeding  elsewhere  because  "there  is  no  oppor- 
tunity in  that  country  any  more,  rents  have  gone  up  too  high."*  This 
system  running  through  the  entire  industrial  world,  being  everywhere  and 
at  all  times  present,  comprising  one  class  who  are  levying  an  impost  upon 
industry  up  to  the  full  limit  it  will  bear,  and  rendering  no  service  for  that 
which  they  receive,  this  accounts  for  much  of  the  distortion  which  we  find 
in  the  industrial  realm  and  in  society  generally  today.  I  shall  not  go  into 
it  further  here,  for  it  is  fully  discussed  in  the  writings  of  Mr.  George  and 
extensively  comprised  in  the  propaganda  of  the  Single  Taxers. 


*The  author  would  like  it  understood  that  he  is  not  a  single  taxer.  If  there  be  any 
group  in  the  field  of  economic  or  administrative  thought  by  which  he  would  designate  his 
factional  adherence,  it  would  be  that  of  the  defenders  of  the  Constitution  ;  wherefore  he 
would  call  himself  a  Constitutionalist.  And  in  so  saying  he  does  not  wish  to  in  any  wise 
disparage  the  magnificent  work  which  has  been  and  is  being  done  by  the  single  taxers, 
nor  to  forego  in  any  degree  his  profound  admiration  for  the  character  and  teachings  of 
Henry  George.  But  the  single  tax  doctrine,  while  in  the  main  correct,  embodies  certain 
principles  with  which  the  author  must  remain  ever  at  variance.  Primarily,  I  am  opposed 
to  the  doctrine  of  the  State  absorbing  the  entire  of  economic  rent,  upon  the  theory  that 
this  rent  belongs  to  society  which  has  created  it,  and  not  to  the  land  owner  who  is 
receiving  it.  The  State  is  entitled  to  draw  from  society  as  taxes  only  that  sum  necessTry 
for  its  economical  administration.  While  it  is  proper  that  this  should  be  drawn  wholly 
and  solely  from  the  rent  of  land,  yet  the  quantity  which  the  State  should  takp  should  be 
limited  by  its  needs,  and  not  by  the  quantity  that  exists  in  the  hands  of  the  land  owner. 
As  relief  of  all  other  forms  of  property  from  taxation  would  stimulate  the  growth  of  the 
latter,  thereby  greatly  increase  land  value,  and  correspondingly  increase  economic  rent,  the 
fact  is  that  taxation  concentrated  upon  rent  would  shortly  not  be  felt  by  those  who  pay  it ; 
and  this  principle,  so  much  dreaded  by  many  city  lot  owners,  would  be,  and  is  being  found, 
in  operation,  not  to  permanently  decrease  their  incomes.  A  government  which  would  take 
the  entire  of  economic  rent  would  be  wasteful  and  tyrannous,  the  only  avenue  through 
which  such  probably  could  be  spent  being  in  these  ruthless  extravagances  which  characterize 
modern  war  and  its  preparations.  Otherwise  than  this,  every  expenditure  made  by  govern- 
ment effective  for  human  good  would  reflect  increase  upon  the  rental  value  of  land,  and  so 
provide  a  larger  fund  of  economic  rent.  The  land  owner,  however,  whom  the  drawing  of 
the  support  of  government  from  economic  rent  would  harm,  is  the  speculative  proprietor  of 
vacant  or  under-used  areas.  This  operator,  while  not  losing  such  of  his  estate,  would  be 
obliged  to  sell  or  lease  to  users  at  such  prices  as  he  could  get,  upon  pain  of  relinquishing 
altogether  his  properties  to  the  government,  and  this  not  because  taxation  would  take  all 
the  rental  value  of  the  land,  but  it  would  take  more  than  he  could  afford  to  pay  and  hold 
the  land  idle.  This  is  considered  by  many  highly  confiscatory,  and  very  awful,  but  I  have 
never  been  able  to  see,  from  his  status  in  society,  how 'he  is  entitled  to  any  special  sym- 
pathy. He  is  that  man  who  occupies  a  wrong  social  position,  and  who  is  permitted  to 
occupy  such  only  so  long  as  the  wrong  is  unrecognized  ;  when  society  perceives  where  the 
error  lies,  it  is  its  right  and  its  duty  to  correct  that  error,  and  if  there  are  those  who 
immediately  lose  by  the  change,  they  have  the  recompense  that  thereafter  they  can  live  in 
a  state  of  society  thus  far  ordered  on  right  lines.  To  "compensate"  him,  would  be  to  take 
from  thos-e  whose  position  has  been  right  and  give  it  to  those  whose  position  has  been 
wrong,  a  thing  that  is  unheard  of  in  administrative  changes  and  reforms.  He  should  be 
glad  to  escape  with  what  he  has  wrongfully  taken,  and  not  find  himself  called  upon  to 
restore  to  society  any  portion  of  such  fund. 

To  other  phases  of  the  single  taxers'  program,  viz.,  the  ownership  and  operation  by 
municipalities  and  other  governments  of  public  utilities,  I  am  wholly  antagonistic.  The 
business  of  government  is  to  govern,  not  to  go  into  industrial  pursuits  to  the  shutting  away 
from  thence  of  its  people.  All  such  projects  are  highly  Socialistic  and  harmful,  notwith- 
standing they  may  seem  momentarily  to  advantage  the  public.  Nor  am  I  in  accord  with 
the  single  taxers  linking  up  with  the  Socialists  and  labor  unionists,  assisting  them  in  their 
strikes  against  "capital,"  and  forming  escorts  for  Mother  Joneses  and  other  et  ceteras,  as 
was  done  recently  in  New  York.  The  Single  Tax  of  today  is  upon  a  different  plane  from 
what  it  was  when  Henry  George  died,  if  its  sympathies  are  now  active  in  this  direction. 
The  Single  Taxer  is  not  a  communist,  he  is  an  individualist,  and,  propertly,  a  Constitution- 
alist ;  since  the  doctrine  that  society  should  be  supported  from  that  fund  which  only  society 
creates  and  can  create,  and  that  which  a  man  acquires  by  earning  or  by  gift  is  absolutely 
his,  and  should  be  inviolably  his — this  doctrine  is  in  the  highest  sense  a  doctrine  of  the 
Constitution,  and  there  is  no  question  that  the  trend  of  the  intelligent  thought  of  the 
country  is  to  so  recognize  it. 

61 


That  the  course  in  which  the  laborers  have  been  and  are  proceeding 
is  effective  of  no  results  of  real  benefit  to  themselves  or  to  the  nation,  is 
shown  by  the  fact,  that  in  those  countries  where  labor  unionism  and  its 
attendant  Socialism  have  had  their  longest  trials  and  have  attained  their 
highest  development,  there  poverty  and  human  misery  rankles  most.  For 
fifty  years  the  labor  union  has  been  active  in  English  industry,  growing 
year  by  year  more  absolute,  until  it  has  for  two  decades  been  dominant, 
even  to  moving  to  its  ends  the  law.  Samuel  P.  Orth,  in  his  "Socialism 
and  Democracy  in  Europe, ' '  says : 

"There  is  no  country  in  Europe  where  there  is  more  agitation  about 
Socialism  than  there  is  in  England  today.  It  is » discussed  everywhere; 
almost  the  entire  time  of  Parliament  during  the  past  few  years  has  been 
taken  up  with  more  or  less  '  Socialistic '  legislation.  The  public  mind  is 
steeped  in  it.  There  is  more  actually  being  done  in  England  today  toward 
the  'Socialization'  of  property,  and  the  State,  than  in  any  other  Euro- 
pean country. ' ' 

And  this  has  been  the  case  for  years.  And  yet  after  all  this  period  we 
hear  the  celebrated  Chancellor  of  Great  Britain,  Mr.  David  Lloyd-George, 
exclaim : 

* '  Go  outside  the  Highlands,  you  have  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men — 
I  wonder  if  there  is  not  an  odd  million — working  unceasingly  for  wages 
that  barely  bring  them  enough  bread  to  keep  themselves  and  their  families 
above  privation.  Generation  after  generation  they  see  their  children  wither 
before  their  eyes  for  lack  of  air,  light,  and  space  which  is  denied  them  by 
men  who  have  square  miles  of  it  for  their  own  use.  Take  our  cities,  the 
great  cities  of  a  great  Empire.  Eight  in  the  heart  of  them  everywhere  you 
have  ugly  quagmires  of  human  misery,  seething,  rotting,  at  last  fermenting. 
We  pass  them  by  every  day  on  our  way  to  our  comfortable  homes.  We 
forget  that  divine  justice  never  passed  by  a  great  wrong.  You  can  hear, 
carried  by  the  breezes  from  the  north,  the  south,  the  east,  and  the  west, 
ominous  rumbling.  The  chariots  of  retribution  are  drawing  nigh.  How 
long  will  all  these  injustices  last  for  myriads  of  men,  women  and  children 
created  in  the  image  of  God — how  long?  I  believe  it  is  coming  to  an  end." 

The  real  means  which  Mr.  Lloyd-George  is  taking  to  bring  to  an  end 
the  conditions  which  produce  the  miseries  he  portrays,  is  the  taxation  of 
land  value,  which  has  heretofore  been  almost  immune  from  taxation  in  a 
nation,  upon  which  the  entire  structure  of  the  aristocratic  element,  with 
its  House  of  Lords,  was  built.  The  great  Chancellor  has  been  compelled 
in  appeasing  popular  demands  to  accede  to  some  extent  to  Socialistic  pro- 
grams as  mere  expedients,  bringing  to  a  large  number  some  measure  of 
temporary  relief;  but  I  feel  safe  in  predicting  that  when  he  has  translated 
into  legislation  his  completed  land  program,  the  Socialistic  law-making  will 
not  only  cease,  but  the  movement  for  repeal  of  that  line  of  statutes  will 
set  in  and  will  continue  until  they  are  practically  all  wiped  out  as  inequi- 
table and  unnecessary. 

Here  then  we  have  initiative,  or  incentive,  immigration  and  land.  If 
these  three  avenues  of  opportunity  were  kept  open  we  should  have  no 

62 


trouble  with  Socialism  or  labor  unionism.  With  incentive  free,  the  genius 
of  man  would  be  constantly  pushing  forward  into  new  domains  of  endeavor, 
and  calling  labor  to  his  aid.  With  immigration  free  on  this  Coast,  the 
western  half  of  the  continent  would  rise  as  rapidly  and  to  as  high  a  degree 
of  greatness  as  exists  upon  the  Atlantic  side,  which  development  has  been 
occasioned  by  the  like  quality  of  free  immigration,  while  the  countries  of 
the  Orient  would  spring  forward  with  new  life,  and  through  building  into 
greatness  by  reason  of  the  free  flow  toward  them  of  the  light  of  our  civili- 
zation, would  soon  become  nations  affording  us  a  tremendous  commerce, 
and  immense  opportunities  for  industrial  development,  to  our  vast  profit 
and  their  benefit;  instead  of  being  as  now  a  menace  to  us,  through  the 
inevitable  future  war  which  non-intercourse  will  necessarily  provoke. 

These  elements  are  the  components  of  individualism,  and  there  is  no 
other  remedy  for  the  industrial  situation.  Under  their  untrammeled  opera- 
tion wages  would  be  as  high  as  the  market  sales  of  the  commodity  or  service 
would  allow,  and  they  would  be  freely  paid  as  the  result  of  a  bid  to  get 
labor,  the  bidding  being  against  the  call  for  labor  elsewhere  existing  by 
reason  of  the  door  of  opportunity  being  open  and  activities  operating  in 
all  localities,  in  every  direction.  The  laborer  would  receive  the  full  mete 
of  reward  which  the  industry  would  allow,  and  when  he  receives  this  he 
has  all  he  is  entitled  to  and  he  cannot  get  more.  This  condition  in  the 
labor  situation  must  not  be  confused  with  the  theory  of  "  demand  and 
supply  of  laborers,"  the  error  of  which  I  have  discussed  extensively  in 
my  Japan  pamphlet.  Demand  and  supply,  however,  may  be  treated  as  of 
two  kinds;  that  which  arises  through  natural  forces,  which  is  industrial 
conditions  unimpaired  by  the  presence  of  monopoly  resting  upon  law, 
and  that  which  is  artificially  created,  as  is  the  case  of  the  labor  unions 
with  their  "closed  shop",  their  union  label,  and  their  Congressional  laws 
keeping  immigrants  out  of  the  country.  With  the  natural  condition  there 
is  high  wages  for  all  with  low  prices;  where  with  the  artificial  condition 
there  is  high  wages  for  some,  idleness  and  half  idleness  for  many,  with 
high  prices,  stifled  industries,  hideous,  overbuilt  monopolistic  enterprises, 
and  starvation;  with  infinite  schemes  of  minimum  wage,  workmen's  com- 
pensation, unemployed  insurance,*  eight  hour  laws,  widows  and  aged  pen- 
sions, maternity  awards,  and  so  on  and  so  on  and  so  on,  with  ever  calls 
for  more  and  more,  until  the  heart  sickens  at  the  thought  of  the  struggling 
people  in  their  ignorance  and  misery  trying  to  find  relief  from  the  oppres- 
sions which  the  pursuit  of  wrong  lines  of  economic  thought  has  held  them 
in,  and  has  led  them  into,  and  in  which  direction  they  can  get  no  relief, 
but  must  only  make  their  burdens  worse,  until  Samson  like — for  the 
Philistian  is  strong  in  his  millions — they  pull  down  upon  all  of  us  the 
structure  of  civilization  which  withal,  we  have  reared  to  magnificent 
heights. 


*A  method  extensively  employed  in   Germany  to  lessen  the   load   of  the  unemployed 
problem. 

63 


Many  projects  of  alleviation  of  the  labor  situation  have  been  proposed. 
Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie  thinks  the  problem  could  be  solved  by  profit  sharing; 
another  would  have  compulsory  arbitration.  Neither  will  avail.  Profit 
sharing  is  not  other  than  bonus  distribution,  a  practice  common  enough  in 
some  establishments,  and  without  doubt  an  innovation  stimulating  to  the 
laborers  employed.  That  it  is  bonus  distribution  may  be  seen  from  the 
fact  that  it  carries  with  it  a  minimum  wage  to  the  laborer.  This  he  gets, 
notwithstanding  he  is  a  partner  and  as  such  would  stand  to  lose  not  alone 
his  wages  but  his  investment,  and  such  a  contingency  is  not  contemplated 
by  the  scheme.  He  is,  however,  a  kind  of  partner  unknown  to  either  the 
law  or  business,  who  shares  in  the  gains,  but  not  in  the  losses;  hence  he  is 
not  a  partner  or  a  stockholder  at  all,  but  a  bonus  taker;  though  the  bonus 
may  be  based  on  profits.  The  scheme  to  be  properly  handled  should  give 
these  rewards  only  for  excellence,  and  not  merely  because  the  receiver. is 
an  employee.  As  a  means  of  solving  the  labor  problem  it  must  be  wholly 
ineffective.  The  great  corporation,  secure  in  its  business,  highly  organized 
and  departmentized,  may  find  such  methods  practicable  and  even  profit- 
able ;  but  it  is  unfitted  to  general  introduction  and  use.  It  would  be  intol- 
erable to  business  that  whenever  a  man  was  called  in  to  do  some  order  of 
labor,  he  became  a  partner  in  the  establishment,  entitled  to  a  dividend  from 
its  profits  in  addition  to  his  wages  for  the  time  he  was  employed,  and  able 
to  force  an  accounting  if  he  did  not  receive  it,  or  was  dissatisfied  with  the 
sum  that  was  paid  him.  And  it  is  utterly  necessary  that  any  system  or 
method  adapted  to  solve  the  labor  question,  must  be  of  universal  applica- 
tion; it  must  be  just  as  fitting  to  the  farmer  who  hires  one  man,  the  store- 
keeper who  hires  two  clerks,  as  to  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation  or 
the  Filene  Stores  of  Boston.* 

Nor  is  the  scheme  of  complsory  arbitration  any  more  effective  as  an 
engine  for  securing  settlement  of  the.  labor  problem.  The  basis  of  this 
plan  is  that  a  laborer  once  employed  acquires  a  vested  interest  in  the 
business  and  property  of  his  employer  and  can  never  be  discharged  against 
his  will.  That  men  by  striking  do  not  quit  the  service  of  their  employer, 
and  the  latter  is  powerless  to  discharge  them.  This  position  once  conceded, 
transfers  the  business  from  the  owners  to  the  employees,  and  makes  Social- 
ism a  thing  highly  to  be  desired,  for  under  that  system  the  business  at 


*  Several  years  ago  the  Atchison,  Topeka  and  Santa  Fe  R.  R.  Company,  after  having 
won  a  strike  in  its  shops,  introduced  a  system  of  piece  work  and  bonuses.  The  method 
worked  so  satisfactorily  to  both  the  men  and  the  company,  that  the  bonus  feature  was 
extended  to  the  enginemen.  The  regular  rate  of  wages  was  continued  as  theretofore,  but 
gratuities  of  added  sums  were  paid,  at  intervals  to  those  having  the  best  records  with  their 
respective  engines ;  the  use  for  a  given  mileage  of  the  least  quantity  of  lubricating  and 
other  oils,  the  keeping  of  the  engine  out  of  the  shop  for  the  longest  period,  and  so  on,  the 
points  and  performances  in  which  men  might  excel  each  other  in  care,  diligence  and 
faithfulness  to  duty,  was  the  basis  of  the  arrangement.  This  practice  had  not  proceeded 
far,  however,  when  the  company  was  called  upon  by  the  head  of  the  Union  and  told  that 
the  system  must  cease.  "You  know  as  well  as  I  do,"  said  this  delegate,  "that  you  a:  e 
laying  an  ax  at  the  very  root  of  unionism.  You  are  differentiating  amongst  the  men, 
spurring  them  to  individual  degrees  of  excellence,  and  fixing  their  fidelity  to  the  company, 
when  it  should  and  must  be  with  the  Union."  It  was  demanded  that  the  company  receive 
back  from  the  Union  the  full  sum  of  all  the  bonuses  which  the  company  had  paid  to  the 
enginemen,  and  that  the  practice  be  discontinued.  The  alternative  was  a  strike.  The 
company  acceded  to  the  demand  ;  the  money  was  restored,  and  the  system  was  discontinued. 

64 


least  would  pass  to  the  State ;  it  would  not  be  at  the  mercy  of  its  servants. 
The  most  that  can  be  said  for  compulsory  arbitration  is  that  it  is  a  means 
of  forcing  cessation  of  a  strike,  compelling  both  parties  to  resume  relations 
against  their  wills ;  for  without  compulsory  arbitration  there  is  over  a  whole 
country,  between  the  employer  and  the  laborer  a  practically  continuous 
state  of  war.  With  classism  regarded  as  the  essential  cleavage  between 
employer  and  employee,  and  its  concomitant  attribute,  class  hatred,  always 
present  and  active,  the  peace  of  industry  is  a  preparation  for  war.  The 
great  plant  often  becomes  enclosed  as  a  provision  of  defence,  and  we  have 
again  the  walled  city  of  mediaeval  Europe.  Pinkerton  detectives,  Farley 
strikebreakers  or  other  guards  are  enlisted  to  defend  the  non-unionists  at 
work,  and  we  have  return  of  the  condottiere  of  the  middle  ages,  the  hireling 
soldier,  warring  for  whatever  faction  will  pay  the  price.  Compulsory 
arbitration  sets  aside  this  wrong  by  imposing  another  wrong,  and  so  admin- 
isters another  drive  toward  Socialism.  Obviously  industry  cannot  be  con- 
ducted with  lasting  success  under  such  an  arrangement  and  where  it  has 
been  longest  tried,  as  in  New  Zealand,  it  is  a  complete  failure,  though  its 
insufficiency  was  not  noted  during  the  first  years  of  its  use.* 

Another  suggestion  of  supposed  remedy  now  being  much  talked  of 
on  this  Coast  is  incorporation  of  the  unions,  whereby,  it  is  assumed,  they 
would  become  legally  liable  for  their  acts,  and  could  in  some  fashion  be 
brought  under  control  of  government.  We  need  waste  no  space  herein  in 
discussing  this  proposal.  It  has  been  tried  for  years  in  Europe  and  has 
been  proven  not  to  produce  the  slightest  deterrent  influence  to  the. objection- 
able features  of  the  unions  which  moved  the  expedient. 

The  real  solution  of  the  labor  question,  which  is  also  the  Socialist 
question,  and  the  real  interest  of  the  laborer,  and  the  direction  in  which  he 
must  work  his  way  out  if  he  is  to  live  as  a  free  man  and  not  as  a  slave,  is 
in  the  opposite  trend  to  which  he  and  his  movement  have  been  going.  His 
interest  is  to  increase,  not  to  diminish  product;  to  promote  abundance,  not 
scarcity;  to  lower  prices,  not  to  raise  them;  to  open  the  door  of  oppor- 
tunity, not  to  be  indifferent  towards  it,  or  to  close  it.  Abundance  and  low 
prices;  high  wages  through  scarcity  of  men  called  off  by  industry,  not 
thrust  out  of  industry  by  unions,  and  kept  out  of  the  country  by  exclusion 
laws,  or  starved  out  by  killing  off  industry  through  destroying  initiative — 
these  are  the  true  concerns  of  labor;  and  every  factor  tending  to  promote 
these  he  should  encourage,  and  every  one  against  them  he  should  oppose. 


*"The  recently  concluded  struggle  of  the  Waterside  workers  shows  up  New  Zealand 
capitalism  in  the  most  astounding  manner.  A  local  union  of  200  members  presents  demands 
to  the  employers.  The  demands  are  turned  down  and  the  men  go  on  a  strike.  The 
employers'  federation  declares  the  union  non-existent  because  it  has  broken  the  arbitration 
law.  Then  they  organize  a  new  "union."  That  is,  they  get  together  a  dozen  or  so  of 
strike-breakers  and  have  them  sign  up  under  the  law  as  a  union.  According  to  the  law 
any  fifteen  men  can  form  a  union  of  any  trade.  It  is  said  that  in  one  case  during  the 
Waterside  strike  six  men  and  a  dog  formed  such  a  "union."  Straightway  the  strike- 
breakers become  the  union  men,  and  the  unionists  are  advertised  as  outlaws.  So  the 
arbitration  law  places  unionism  in  the  hands  of  the  employers.  No  wonder  that  the 
General  Laborers'  Union,  a  rebel  organization,  has  grown  so  amazingly  during  the  past  two 
years."  "The  Land  without  Strikes,"  by  William  E.  Bohn,  International  Socialist  Review, 
March,  1914. 

65 


His  interest  is  not  to  become  a  serf  to  the  State,  as  would  quickly  ensue 
under  the  centralized  system  of  Socialism  with  its  allurements  of  "  demo- 
era  tic  management"  and  "people's  rule";  but  to  remain  an  independent 
man,  a  citizen  and  not  a  subject,  possessing  rights  and  not  permits; 
prerogatives,  not  privileges;  the  entire  vouchsafed  by  an  organic 
instrument,  and  clenched  by  written  law.  A  government  of  limitations, 
of  checks  and  balances,  rigidly  held  against  incursions  upon  the  rights  of 
citizens,  yet  sufficiently  elastic  in  its  universal  basis  of  human  liberty  to 
admit  any  change  attaining  larger  freedom  of  action,  greater  security  to 
life  and  wider  recognition  of  property.  Such  is  the  American  constitution, 
and  fatal  will  be  the  day  to  the  progress  of  human  kind  when  it  is  sub- 
verted or  swept  aside.  Moreover  the  laborer  should  remember  that  so  long 
as  he  works  as  a  laborer  he  is  a  laborer;  he  is  not  and  cannot  be  at  once  a 
laborer  and  a  capitalist,  a  promoter,  a  master  or  a  statesman;  nor  can  he 
in  any  aspect  expand  the  share  of  the  laborer  to  embrace  the  rewards  of 
any  of  these,  and  all  attempts  to  do  so  must  recoil  to  his  own  disadvantage. 
The  work  he  performs  is  as  necessary  to  industry  as  that  of  the  others,  but 
not  more  necessary.  The  fact  that  the  employer  who  manages,  the  general 
who  directs,  the  capitalist  who  furnishes  the  wherewithal,  receive  a  larger 
share  of  the  product  than  any  individual  laborer,  a  circumstance  which 
occasions  so  much  dissatisfaction  to  many  of  the  laborers  and  their  advo- 
cates today,  is  an  inherent  and  continuous  incident,  and  can  never  be 
changed  so  long  as  industry  endures.  It  would  obtain  in  just  as  high  a 
degree  under  the  amplest  efflorescence  of  State  Socialism  as  it  exists  today. 
It  is  an  incident  of  nature  and  arises  through  the  fact  that  the  chiefs  of 
all  action  are  higher  endowed  in  their  several  psychologies  than  are  other 
men.  The  very  fact  that  they  are  chiefs  is  proof  of  this.  The  lure  of 
unusual  capacity  to  display  of  unusual  endeavor  is  always  high  rewards. 
Men  delight  to  bestow  their  offerings  upon  those  gifted  ones  endowed  with 
powers  to  render  great  service,  and  which  they  freely  employ.  Power, 
however  expressed,  induces  its  full  mete  of  material  returns.  From  the 
savage  or  the  barbaric  king  to  the  great  inventor  or  the  great  captain  of 
industry,  and  from  these  in  subinfeudation,  graduating  down  to  the  lowest 
man  who  stands  on  the  plane  of  service  above  another,  are  all  requited  in 
degree  by  the  free  and  natural  consent  of  men  with  greater  rewards  than 
another.  Were  it  not  so  there  would  be  no  cause  for  aspiration,  nothing 
to  move  ambition  or  stir  man  to  excel. 

The  favorable  results  to  the  laborers  that  would  be  produced  by  the 
change  in  the  land  system,  while  demanded  by  the  Socialists  in  a  far  larger 
measure  than  that  which  is  here  conceded,  is  by  them  nevertheless  deemed 
inadequate  as  giving  to  the  laborer  as  much  as  will  satisfy  him.  However 
that  may  be  it  is  all  he  is  entitled  to  receive  and  when  he  gets  this  he  sliall 
have  his  full  measure  of  rights  and  cannot  possibly  get  more.  He  has  a 
right  to  full,  free  and  fair  opportunity,  in  the  face  of  nature,  and  in  the 
face  of  law;  and  for  the  rest  it  is  "up  to  him."  Socialism  is  neither  prac- 

66 


ticable  nor  possible  as  a  measure  of  relief  to  the  laborer,  and  if  ever  brought 
into  existence  will  produce  indescribable  chaos  and  war. 

And  let  me  say  to  you  my  business  friend,  if  you  think  you  can  combat 
Socialism  and  destroy  it  by  merely  denouncing  it,  you  are  gravely  mistaken. 
This  gigantic  ogre  does  not  exist  by  mere  accident  or  fad,  there  is  a  real 
cause  for  its  being;  and  if  you  who  are  intrenched  in  wrong  so  prize 
the  land  value  which  you  erroneously  hold  against  society  that  you  are 
content  to  let  things  come  as  they  may  so  long  as  your  position  is  intact,  I 
ask  you  to  cast  your  eyes  over  Europe  at  the  present  moment  where  there 
is  operating  the  final  effects  of  peoples  in  nations  nursing  this  great  wrong. 
In  that  day,  and  it  will  in  its  due  course  be  effective  here  just  as  it  is 
rending  there — in  that  day  I  say,  the  ruthless  soldiers  of  the  scourge  of 
God  will  pay  not  the  slightest  regard  for  you  or  your  notions  of  vested  inter- 
ests, but  they  will  trample  with  heel  and  hoof  and  burn  and  blast  in  the 
fires  and  shock  of  battle  whatever  there  is  that  you  value  and  hold  dear; 
and  if  you  in  that  day  carry  with  you  the  consciousness  of  the  cause  that 
lay  at  the  bottom  of  that  havoc,  as  I  am  pointing  it  to  you  here,  your  soul 
will  rise  to  your  lips  and  you  will  curse  it !  It  is  no  longer  the  time  for 
quibbles,  as  whether  this  or  that  change  from  obvious  wrong  to  obvious 
right  is  going  to  inconvenience  some  one;  as  to  whether  myself  or  Mister 
So  and  So,  who  is  enjoying  the  fruits  of  wrong  may  or  may  not  like  it,  or 
would  or  will  not  consent  that  the  change  be  made.  With  the  sword  of 
Justice  wrong  must  be  hunted  out  and  destroyed.  It  is  the  high  noon  of 
the  day  for  action  which  can  no  longer  with  safety  to  the  nation  be 
delayed. 

And  now  having  gone  forward  in  this  discourse  through  some  scores 
of  pages,  I  must  pause  and  bring  my  dissertations  to  a  close.  These  latter 
comprise  three  papers  in  all;  the  foregoing,  with  the  two  pamphlets  to 
which  I  have  herein  referred.  Not  without  a  sense  of  regret  even  to  the 
length  of  sorrow,  do  I  lay  aside  the  pen  of  economics,  and  resume  again 
the  work  of  law.  There  is  so  much  in  this  great  and  tense  sociological 
situation  to  be  said  upon  what  I  conceive  to  be  Correct  and  proper  lines 
for  its  movement,  for  the  safety  and  security  of  the  nation,  that  with  my 
message  yet  unspoken  or  only  partially,  even  slightly  expressed,  I  can  but 
turn  from  it  with  feelings  I  shall  not  describe.  With  the  confusion  which 
is  now  billowing  around  us,  with  the  marching  armies  everywhere  beyond 
the  Atlantic,  the  ferment  in  Mexico,  the  guns  of  Japan  on  shores  of  Kiau 
Chau  which  may  be  taken  as  the  primary  step  to  the  partition  of  China, 
when  we  shall  be  fronted  on  the  Pacific  by  warlike  Europe — with  these 
conditions  now  reigning,  and  the  great  central  cause  of  it  all  here,  present 
with  us  in  this  disturbed  state  of  the  industrial  world  which  we  have  been 
discussing,  it  would  seem  that  every  pen  able  to  point  the  way  of  light 
and  guidance  should  be  employed.  Very  certain  it  is  that  the  only  hope 
of  this  our  nation  in  this  environment  is  the  working  out  and  wise  applica- 

67 


tion  of  the  true  solution  of  these  great  questions.  When  America  can  and 
xdoes  apply  to  practice  the  principles  which  attain  and  hold  peace  among 
the  peoples  within  her  borders,  she  shall  have  pointed  the  way  to  the  peace 
of  the  world,  and  she  will  quell  the  surging  onslaught  which  otherwise 
surely  will  involve  her.  Very  certainly  this  longed  for  world's  peace  will 
never  be  had  by  the  preaching  of  the  doctrines  which  have  heretofore  been 
employed  by  the  various  pacification  societies  organized  and  so  splendidly 
financed  to  that  end,  and  which  have  been  pursuing  their  endeavors  toward 
static  peace  for  more  than  a  decade  past.  Far  other  teachings  must  be 
spread  abroad  than  those ;  nations  will  never  refrain  from  embracing  war 
by  narratives  of  how  bad  a  thing  war  is,  how  destructive  of  life,  how 
wasteful  of  property,  how  harmful  to  civilization  itself.  The  call  must  be 
made  upon  other  chords  of  the  human  soul  than  those  of  sympathy  or 
suffering  over  loss.  It  must  be  recognized  that  war  is  caused  by  mass 
hatred, — the  hating  by  men  of  each  other,  not  for  anything  which  they 
severally  do,  but  for  reasons  of  race,  of  nationality,  concepts  of  industrial 
interests,  religious  beliefs  or  political  opinions.  It  is  an  easy  matter  to 
affect  the  psychologies  of  multitudes  of  people,  and  fill  them  with  bitter- 
ness toward  each  other,  so  that  they  are  ready  to  murder  and  destroy  upon 
the  slightest  provocation.  Under  the  mistaken  notion  of  "patriotism", 
governments  of  Europe  have  fostered  this  spirit,  and  they  are  now  reaping 
the  whirlwind.  Mass  hatred,  whatever  expression  it  may  take,  has  its  roots 
in  economics.  When  men  are  prosperous,  free  and  contented  they  do  not 
wilfully  hate  each  other.  The  way  to  dispel  hatred  is  to  show  men  that 
human  welfare  is  not  direct ;  that  it  is  a  reflex  action  and  condition  issuing 
from  the  wellbeing  of  others,  and  that  men  to  help  themselves  must  help 
their  fellows;  that  when  they  harm  their  fellows  they  harm  themselves. 
This  is  the  law,  and  it  can  never  be  otherwise.  The  vast  conflict  which  is 
now  raging  in  Europe  is  but  an  orgie  of  mutual  destruction,  without  the 
slightest  possible  benefit  to  those  who  may  win.  Next  to  killing  themselves 
and  destroying  their  own  property,  the  Germans  could  not  possibly  do 
themselves  more  injury  than  by  killing  the  Belgians  and  French,  nor  the 
Russians  by  killing  the  Germans,  and  the  destroying  of  properties  of  the 
respective  peoples.  The  mere  fact  that  the  cities  and  the  fields  of  Belgium 
and  France  are  on  the  yon  side  of  a  German  boundary  line,  is  of  not  the 
slightest  consequence  to  the  German  people.  The  latter  would  be  no  better 
off  were  those  cities  and  country  within  than  without  their  own  boundaries. 
It  is  utterly  of  no  importance  to  the  people  within  a  country  as  to  whether 
they  are  ruled  by  one  reigning  house  or  another,  any  more  than  it  is  of 
any  consequence  to  a  man  here  whether  he  live  under  the  government  of 
California,  of  Ohio  or  New  York.  Mere  governmental  administration,  so 
long  as  it  be  just,  orderly  and  reasonable,  is  of  no  moment  as  to  its  identity 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  happiness  and  prosperity  of  the  people,  to 
attain  which  is  the  only  reason  at  all  for  governments  existing.  And  this 
bloated  overlordship,  with  its  incident  stupendous  waste  of  human  labor 

68 


in  armaments  and  else,  is  but  the  sheerest  folly,  arising  altogether  from  the 
erroneous  idea  that  human  welfare  is  direct  and  not  indirect  as  I  state. 
It  is  built  upon  the  erroneous  notion  that  one  people  can  best  prosper 
through  prevention  of  others.  If  we  should  strike  down  tariffs  on 
boundaries  through  which  the  whole  of  Europe  is  octroied,  elim- 
inate immigration  exclusion,  and  make  men  equal  before  the  law — pro- 
visions aimed  to  advantage  some  to  the  detriment  of  others  within  their 
own  countries,  there  would  be  but  little  difference  to  the  individual  whether 
he  lived  under  one  European  government  or  another.  His  opportunities  in 
the  respective  nations  would  be  just  about  the  same.  It  is  not  the  flag  that 
affords  him  prosperity,  it  is  the  existence  of  people  about  him  and  beyond 
who  are  themselves  prosperous  and  who  hence  have  need  for  his  services, 
rendered  in  products  or  otherwise,  and  who  have  the  ability  to  pay  therefor. 
How  long  will  it  be  before  me'n  learn  that  any  blow  struck  at  their  fellows, 
whether  as  individuals  or  collectively  in  nations,  but  rebounds  and  smites 
themselves?  This  is  the  world  lesson.  God,  or  Nature  stands  first;  the 
next  is  your  neighbor;  and  if  Jesus,  in  that  marvelous  propaganda  which 
while  the  world  lasts  will  stand  before  men  as  a  pillar  of  light  and  leading 
—if  he  had  said  nothing  else  than  his  answer  to  the  lawyer  in  Matthew, 
he  would  have  held  a  place  in  history  as  among  the  deepest  of  the  philos- 
ophers of  the  ancients ;  for  in  reply  to  the  question :  ' '  Master,  what  is  the 
great  law?"  he  said:  "Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart,  with  all  thy  mind,  and  with  all  thy  strength.  This  is  the  first  great 
law.  The  second  is  like  unto  it :  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself. 
On  these  two  hang  all  the  law  and  the  prophets. ' '  It  may  be  asserted  that 
the  whole  structure  of  correct  human  conduct  lies  in  these  utterances.  If 
all  rules,  all  policies,  all  ordinances,  all  relations  of  men  to  men  were  based 
on  this  principle,  there  would  be  unbroken  peace  amongst  mankind,  and 
the  highest  happiness  upon  earth.  This  is  not  "religion,"  not  mere 
altruism,  it  is  hard,  bottom-rock  economics.  To  "love  God",  is  merely  to 
get  into  harmony  with  Nature;  to  understand  her  laws  and  to  conform 
one's  life  and  behavior  to  them — to  be  ever  ready  to  change  one's  conduct, 
views  of  things,  and  to  forsake  interests,  as  soon  as  understanding  is  had 
of  the  existence  of  a  law  of  nature  in  conflict  with  these  qualities,  which 
is  not  being  obeyed.  This  is  man's  only  safety  on  earth,  for  if  you  go 
against  natural  law,  whether  such  be  in  the  physical  realm,  or  in  the 
region  of  human  relations,  there  attends  the  penalty  of  unhappiness  and 
woe,  and  ultimate  loss  or  destruction.  And  in  respect  of  your  neighbor  it 
is  not  meant  that  you  shall  embrace  him  as  do  the  Latins,  or  bestow  on  him 
the  affection  which  you  dote  upon  your  family — that  is  not  the  meaning  of 
this  command ;  but  you  should  do  nothing  to  harm  him,  nothing  to  deprive 
him  of  equal  right  and  equal  opportunity  to  lawfully  do  for  himself.  God 
has  schemed  it  so  that  if  you  deal  with  him  at  all,  looking  ever  so  singly  to 
your  own  interests,  you  shall  prosper  him,  and  this  is  all  he  wants.  Given 
his  normal  strength  he  does  not  wish  your  gifts;  but  if  he  should  fall  by 

69 


the  wayside  through  no  grievous  fault  of  his  own,  it  ennobles  your  man- 
hood to  help  him.  It  is  indeed  the  ethical  doctrines  of  Jesus  Christ  that 
will  free  men  of  war  and  all  else  that  breeds  destruction.  Not  the  theo- 
logical edifices  which  have  been  built  upon  those  doctrines  and  with  which 
they  have  really  nothing  to  do,  but  the  doctrines  themselves,  the  most 
potential  influence  that  exists  in  the  world  today,  which  hand  in  hand 
with  economic  adjustments  need  only  to  be  locally  applied  to  abolish  war, 
which  will  never  otherwise  go  hence. 

But  for  this  and  all  else,  you  my  friend,  who  have  followed  me, 
patiently,  perhaps  wearily  enough,  over  this  area  of  economic  inquest 
there  is  surcease.  The  labors  I  have  for  months  past  been  performing,  in 
order  that  for  the  common  good  I  might  distribute  these  writings  abroad, 
must  have  an  end.  Foolish,  indeed,  it  is  for  one,  however  he  feels  himself 
imbued  with  the  sacred  principles  of  equal  right  and  justice,  to  single 
handed  seek  to  acquaint  the  world  therewith.  Worthless  were  the  task  if 
it  be  mine  alone.  But  in  the  realm  of  compensation  and  those  adaptations 
which  further  helpful  objects  and  rebuke  such  as  are  vain,  there  is,  it 
is  my  hope,  some  resource  which  will  again  call  forth  this  writing  to  aid 
mankind.  If  there  be  not,  then  is  it  Allah's  will,  and  to  this  all  must 
be  resigned. 


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YC   15437 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


